Health Comm Central
Real results to improve health outcomes and health equity begin with behavioral science. Public health communication strategist Karen Hilyard, Ph.D. will help you unpack behavior change theories & frameworks and apply them in practical ways to build a kick-ass health communication toolkit. Create more effective, engaging, evidence-based messages & campaigns to transform not only individual behaviors, but the policies and systems that impact social determinants of health.
Episodes
50 episodes
COVID, Trust, and Health Disparities: Interview with Sandra Crouse Quinn, Ph.D. (Part 2) | Ep #48
In Part Two of my conversation with Sandra Crouse Quinn, we talk about COVID and trust, plus future challenges when it comes to increasing health equity. Dr. Quinn and her colleague Stephen Thomas were two of the first researchers to shine a li...
•
Episode 48
•
14:57
Tuskegee’s Impact on Trust: Interview with Sandra Crouse Quinn, Ph.D. (Part 1) | Ep #47
For most people in public health today, the role that trust — or more accurately, distrust — often plays in racial health disparities may seem obvious. When both lived experience and research confirm that implicit and intentional bias in the sy...
•
Episode 47
•
28:17
Applying Adult Learning Theory to Health Promotion | Ep #46
While effective teachers and professors consider adult learning theory one of the go-to frameworks for curriculum development, you may not realize how useful it can be, and how well-researched it is, in the world of health promotion and health ...
•
Episode 46
•
21:36
Positive Deviance: A Strengths-Based Approach to Improving Health Outcomes | Ep #45
So often when we consider health disparities in a population, we focus on what is wrong or deficient — the barriers to good health. But what if instead we gathered wisdom from people and communities who are exceptions to the rule, then tried to...
•
Episode 45
•
32:27
4 More Media Relations Essentials | Ep #44
Wrapping up our series on media, today we look at four more media relations essentials that can help you earn media coverage: Op-eds, letters to the editor; becoming a go-to resource for journalists; and convening an editorial board meeting. Al...
•
Episode 44
•
22:21
Earning a Coveted Media Interview with Wendy Guarisco | Ep #43
Every day, television and radio shows across the country have thousands of interview slots to fill during live programming and they are hungry for people who can fill those slots. If you’re not taking advantage of these guest interviews as a ch...
•
Episode 43
•
26:03
The “Swiss Army Knife” of Your Health Comm Toolkit | Ep #42
This is the second in our short series unlocking the secrets of media relations and earning media coverage. Today’s episode is all about the timeless power of the press release. Is it old school? Absolutely. Is it still effective? Without a dou...
•
Episode 42
•
24:04
The PESO Framework | Ep #41
The value of the PESO for your health communication work may be far greater than you think… if you’re talking about the PESO Model created by public relations professional by Gini Dietrich. In this episode, we unpack the four types of media in ...
•
Episode 41
•
17:01
What an Old Guy in a Toga Can Teach Us about Communication | Ep #40
What can we learn from an old guy in a toga about communication? Centuries worth of what makes an effective message, it turns out — if that old guy is Aristotle. This episode unpacks the three appeals that the Greek philosopher Aristotle id...
•
Episode 40
•
17:35
Key Informant Interviews in Health Comm Research | Ep #39
Key informant interviews (often called KIIs and also known as in-depth interviews or IDIs) can provide insights about your audiences, your messages, and your campaigns. KIIs can be one of the easiest and lowest-cost types of data-gathering avai...
•
26:51
Intro to Social Norms | Ep #38
If the behavior you are trying to promote involves any social influences (and most do—to some extent!) you may wonder whether a “social norms” campaign or intervention is the right approach. In this episode, we talk about the difference between...
•
Episode 38
•
25:15
What Health Communicators Need to Know About A.I. | Ep #37
By now, almost everyone has heard of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence apps. But if you’re a health communicator and you are not actively using them, you’re missing out. In this episode, we talk about five ways to use ChatGPT right now,...
•
Episode 37
•
26:45
The Best of Intentions | Ep #36
Research has shown that behavioral intention is a fairly good predictor of behavior… but what about when it’s not? For many people with executive function impairments — which includes not only many individuals who are neurodivergent, but also p...
•
Episode 36
•
18:52
Influencing Planned Behavior with the TPB | Ep #35
The Theory of Reasoned Action/Theory of Planned Behavior (TRA/TPB) is one of the classics of behavioral theory… but what does it offer that some of the other “classics” we’ve explored — like Social Cognitive Theory and the Health Belief Model —...
•
Episode 35
•
19:38
How to Find a Theory that Fits | Ep #34
Theories and frameworks are an essential part of planning and evaluating campaigns and interventions. (If you’re not sure why, stop right now and go back to Episode 2, where we lay out the many reasons that “nothing is more practical than a goo...
•
Episode 34
•
19:30
Putting Individual Behavior in Context: The Social Ecological Model | Ep #33
One of the first frameworks to put the individual in the context of all the factors that influence behavior — including policies, systems, and environments — was the Social Ecological Model, sometimes also referred to as the Socioecological Mod...
•
Episode 33
•
13:04
Social Cognitive Theory: The Theory That Seems to Be Everywhere | Ep #32
Almost everywhere you turn in health communication—really, in any kind of communication — you’ll find Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) at the root of some pretty fundamental truths about how human behavior is influenced by others and by the world ...
•
Episode 32
•
17:40
Diffusion of Innovation 101 | Ep #31
Getting a new idea, policy, or behavior to take hold and be widely adopted is a complex and often slow process. Even great ideas often fail to catch on. But a better understanding of the process people follow in considering and adopting new ide...
•
Episode 31
•
21:53
Making Behavior Change Easier, More Fun, and More Popular | Ep #30
In the last (really!) of this brief series on social marketing, we look at the strategic approach that is most commonly used in social marketing: Making a behavior seem easier, more fun, or more popular than whatever competing behavior people a...
•
Episode 30
•
15:54
Putting the Audience First in Social Marketing | Ep #29
Audience research is absolutely essential to the social marketing process. Unless you truly know the audience’s values and needs, you cannot craft a strategy to exchange a new healthier behavior for a competing behavior.In this episode,...
•
Episode 29
•
20:16
Behavioral Transactions: Not What You Think! | Ep #28
A premise of social marketing is “every behavior is a transaction.” It’s actually an idea that is well understood in sociology, psychology, and communication, but to the uninitiated, it can sound pretty harsh. But transactional beha...
•
Episode 28
•
18:02
Putting the Exchange in Behavior Change | Ep #27
In this second episode of our brief series on social marketing, we look at the theory that underpins it: Exchange Theory. Understanding how to apply Exchange Theory will help you choose the right message for an audience based on what you know a...
•
Episode 27
•
17:14
But I’m Not Selling Anything! | Ep #26
The concept of Product and Price from the Four Ps of Marketing can be confusing when you’re new to social marketing. What’s your product if you are just trying to persuade someone to change their behavior? And what is the price if n...
•
Episode 26
•
21:12
Three Fresh Ways to Get Serious About Plain Language | Ep #25
If you’re serious about health equity, you have to get serious about plain language. Today’s episode was inspired by a great
•
Episode 25
•
18:39
Building Resistance to Competing Messages Using Inoculation Theory | Ep #24
In a world of competing messages and disinformation, wouldn’t it be great if you could protect your audience against the influence of conflicting or unhealthy information they may encounter – almost the way a vaccination protects your body from...
•
Episode 24
•
18:14