Despite a lack of scholarly consensus on the effectiveness of health communication campaigns, there is general agreement that communication interventions are necessary to bring about and maintain large-scale behavior and social change in developing countries. Designing, implementing, and evaluating health communication campaigns is a complex task with myriad challenges multiplying manifold in developing country settings. There are some key elements of health communication campaigns in developing countries, and these campaigns need to employ and report on explicit theories of behavior and social change while looking toward holistic socioecological approaches.

Global health communication can be characterized as having passed through four distinct eras evolving over time from a medical-and-supply-oriented model to one that is integrative and focuses on individuals and communities as producers of their own health. ...