COVID-19 Communication Campaigns for Vaccination: An Assessment with Perspectives for Future Equity-Centered Public Health Efforts.

Although public and private institutions have spent billions of dollars on COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, many of which claim to be "equity-focused," few articles to date have objectively described the landscape of these campaigns or identified existing gaps with a focus on those populations disproportionately impacted by the virus. To these ends, a high-level landscape analysis of COVID-related communication campaigns was conducted. Analysis of 15 COVID-related communication campaigns based on six criteria (i.e., understandability, accessibility, actionability, credibility/trustworthiness, relevance/relatability, and timeliness) identified successful efforts, including campaigns aligned with the World Health Organization's Strategic Communications Framework and rooted in community co-design and communication science. The analysis also revealed five common shortcomings: campaigns were not end-user focused, only "checked the box" when communicating with historically under-resourced communities, were largely broadcast-focused and rarely involved two-way engagement strategies or tactics, demonstrated poor use of online communication approaches and failed to moderate campaign comment boards/social media sites, and commonly targeted "intermediary" audiences with materials that were not "end user ready." Based on these findings, the authors offer recommendations to guide funding and development of future health communication campaigns focused on reaching diverse audiences.

Evaluating MyPlate: an expanded framework using traditional and nontraditional metrics for assessing health communication campaigns.

MyPlate, the icon and multimodal communication plan developed for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), provides an opportunity to consider new approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of communication initiatives. A review of indicators used in assessments for previous DGA communication initiatives finds gaps in accounting for important intermediate and long-term outcomes. This evaluation framework for the MyPlate Communications Initiative builds on well-known and underused models and theories to propose a wide breadth of observations, outputs, and outcomes that can contribute to a fuller assessment of effectiveness. Two areas are suggested to focus evaluation efforts in order to advance understanding of the effectiveness of the MyPlate Communications Initiative: understanding the extent to which messages and products from the initiative are associated with positive changes in social norms toward the desired behaviors, and strategies to increase the effectiveness of communications about DGA in vulnerable populations.

Health and nutrient content claims in food advertisements on Hispanic and mainstream prime-time television.

OBJECTIVE: Characterize frequency and type of health and nutrient content claims in prime-time weeknight Spanish- and English-language television advertisements from programs shown in 2003 with a high viewership by women aged 18 to 35 years. DESIGN: Comparative content analysis design was used to analyze 95 hours of Spanish-language and 72 hours of English-language television programs (netting 269 and 543 food ads, respectively). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: A content analysis instrument was used to gather information on explicit health and nutrient content claims: nutrition information only; diet-disease; structure-function; processed food health outcome; good for one's health; health care provider endorsement. ANALYSIS: Chi-square statistics detected statistically significant differences between the groups. RESULTS: Compared to English-language television, Spanish-language television aired significantly more food advertisements containing nutrition information and health, processed food/health, and good for one's health claims. Samples did not differ in the rate of diet/disease, structure/function, or health care provider endorsement claims. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Findings indicate that Spanish-language television advertisements provide viewers with significantly more nutrition information than English-language network advertisements. Potential links between the deteriorating health status of Hispanics acculturating into US mainstream culture and their exposure to the less nutrition-based messaging found in English-language television should be explored.

Guidance for evaluating mass communication health initiatives: summary of an expert panel discussion sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In May 2004, 12 experts in evaluating large-scale health communication programs came to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to participate in an electronic focus group discussion. They offered advice on topics ranging from the role of logic models to the best strategies for controlling for self-selection bias in surveys regarding outcomes of exposure to mass media health messages. The experts also highlighted health communication evaluation topics that have received too little scientific attention. Finally, they made strategic policy recommendations. Use of the state-of-the-art evaluation methods that they recommended could improve the communication of factual and persuasive health messages and help to guard the public health of the nation. Their advice may also advance evaluation practice in other substantive areas, especially where it is difficult or impossible to implement randomized designs.