Public Health: Campaign That Promotes HIV Testing. Essay Example.

Health promotion practices can be used at various ecological levels. The motivation of health behavior can be suppressed by various factors that lead to a change of behavior and behavioral change theories. Sufficient communication is key if public health practitioners need to pass a message to the target population. In public health, ecological perspectives are used and which account for some factors determining the way through which messages are created, translated and the results of communication. Although not all theories can be applied to a public health issue, most of the theories work for almost every activity. Practitioners at the New York City Health Department have incorporated almost every working strategy to their #BeHIVSure campaign. The target population of the advertisement is couples or partners who are dating and who have not yet been tested for HIV. Communication that is being done passively and can produce positive change in a large target population (Hornik, & Yanovitzky, 2003).

The theory of motivation and behavior relevant to this case scenario is the theory of social psychology. This is evident as the ad targets the individual decisions and the attitudes and behavior of the proximal others. The communication model that is being used for this advertisement is the social, ecological model and which limits the reception of the message to only a group over a long period. To facilitate behavior change, the communication theory being applied is the Cognitive Dissonance Theory since the ad invokes cognitive responses. Through the theory, an audience is left to make decisions at an individual level (Morgan, 2009). The advertisement is effective since it communicates useful information to the audience through a social-ecological perspective. A social context and an influence on behavior is what is encompassed in this theory. It has been demonstrated that social context alters behavior (Simons-Morton, McLeroy & Wendel, 2012). Since behavior is socially mediated, as soon as the target persons are reached with the campaign poster, some other will follow as a result of interaction with the target. As a result, healthcare professionals such as I can retrieve new ideas about how people can react to the same information in the banner in a different perspective. Through such an advertisement, I can also be able to understand the perceptions about the social normative issues, social cognitions and cognitive information. In application, the theory of social psychology has been relevant as it has successfully provided experimental research on a variety of socially mediated behaviors such as engaging in sex without knowing ones status (Simons-Morton, McLeroy & Wendel, 2012).

References

Simons-Morton, B. G., McLeroy, K. R., & Wendel, M. L. (2012). Behavior theory in health promotion practice and research. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Hornik, R & Yanovitzky, I. (2003). Using theory to design evaluations of communication campaigns: the case of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. Commun Theory. 2003;13:20424.

Morgan, S. E. (2009). The intersection of conversation, cognitions, and campaigns: The social representation of organ donation. Commun Theory. 2009;19:2948.