Week 15: Key Learnings

I can't believe the semester is nearly over! I have definitely learned a lot in this course throughout this semester, and unlike many other courses I believe that this information will actually stick with me in the future!
I appreciate all of the hands-on activities as those really helped me to understand the concepts we talked about in class. I feel that I have learned useful public health communication skills plus tools that will make me a more critical and aware consumer. I do find myself paying attention to and analyzing the numerous messages I am exposed to in the world. Our group project has been lots of work but very interesting and a great experience -- I enjoyed the fact that we got to put our newly learned skills to use to produce something tangible, and hopefully useful for our 'client.' I anticipate using many of the skills we learned in class in my public health future, especially formative research and audience segmentation, since there is always an audience to reach and formative research can help inform nearly any project/campaign/intervention. Thanks for such a useful class!

Week 14: Now What?...

In this week's class it was interesting to talk about the our futures after grad school, and is nice to hear that we will be marketable and have the potential to find public health related jobs in many fields.
This course has definitely taught me numerous skills about conducting formative research, creating health communication campaigns, and about health communication in general. Hopefully all the skills and information I've learned will be put to good use when I land that fabulous job after graduation! Although we did get to touch on it during the last class, I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to spend more time discussing program/campaign evaluation. In my current student position at the Institute for Public Health that is what I get to do all the time and I have come to realize how important evaluation is to programs. Evaluation is vital for convincing funders that your program is wonderful and effective and should continue to be funded, thus helping the public plus ensuring us jobs for at least that much longer :)

Week 13: Entertainment Education

As we talked about in class this week, entertainment and pop culture are potentially powerful tools for us to use to get health messages out to the general public. These are especially great avenues for reaching those people with low involvement in our health issue. However, health ed through pop culture may not work for everyone (including those with high issue involvement. Therefore as health educators we also need to utilize other education strategies to influence those who don't give much credibility to the Simpsons or Sex in the City.
However, as Dr. Engelberg mentioned, most people are going to have low involvement in our issues. So maybe entertainment education is the right path to go down. Ideally it would be nice if we could use all the different avenues we have available to consistently relay the same messages through these different channels. For example, if Sex in the City characters were consistently shown using condoms, while news shows talked to health experts who stressed the importance of always using condoms, while radio skits also talked about when and how to use condoms, etc. all different audience segments would be getting the same health message through various ways and hopefully they would pay attention to the source that is most compelling to them.

Week 12: You Mean There's an Updated Version of the Web???

Wow do I feel old! I had no idea we are already on version 2 of the web! Web 2.0 is out there being consumed by the youngsters and those much more 'with it' than me, and I'm still sticking to the internet for email, searches, and only recently blogging, social bookmarking, and using photo galleries. I've really got to get with it if I'm going to take advantage of the great tools available through every-changing technology. Maybe I should sit down with a 'youth' of today and have them give me a lesson in social networking, interactive gaming, and all the ways the internet is facilitating communication today.
It is great to see democracy at work through projects such as Wikipedia (click here for an interesting video about this democratically maintained tool), since sometimes it feels as though we don't see democracy played out in other areas of our lives. With all the information that is instantaneously available to us via the web, it can be a bit overwhelming. But I am interested in at least trying to catch up and learn what all Web 2.0 has to offer...though no doubt that by the time I've somewhat gotten a handle on it, we'll be on to version 4.2, just like with all other technology!

Week 11: Media Advocacy

The video we watched in class this week by Jean Kilbourne (Killing Us Softly) was very intriguing, and I'm looking forward to watching the parts that we did not get a chance to see in class. I think her message regarding the excessive objectification of women in media and advertising is an important one that more people need to hear. Watching this video reminded me of another film that I watched in a women's studies class earlier this semester about the effects of how gender is constructed and portrayed in our society. This film featured a women who I believe is on record as having the most plastic surgeries. She had this idea of what constituted the 'perfect' woman and just went down her list getting those things surgically done. Although she claims not to have been influenced by popular media, it sounds like Kilbourne would not agree with that. As mentioned in the Kilbourne video, even if we think we are not paying attention to the ads and portrayls of women in the media, they are all around us and constantly affecting our thinking.
Ideally I would love it if we could turn this around, and get rid of all the negative portrayals of women and the idea of non-existent 'perfect' woman. Unfortunately that is a bit of a daunting task. More realistic ways of taking action would be to share this video with others, speak up when seeing demeaning ads, and think carefully about all this when using sex, looks and money in message promotion. Having said that though, that last bit gets tricky since we know that sex, looks and money sell. So I guess it falls back on the individual to find a balance between motivation people for the 'wrong' reason and effectively promotion a message. Lots to consider!