Developing Countries, Campaigns in

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. A recent definition of public communication programs campaigns from Ronald Rice and Charles Atkin, which they report adapting from Everett Rogers and J. Douglas Storey, describes campaigns as purposeful and organized activities and messages utilizing multiple channels to promote behavior and social change among large audiences.

The term developing country is value-laden, with those opposed to this terminology arguing that it assumes all countries aspire to Western-style growth and development. It is widely acknowledged that this terminology serves as a means to categorize nations for analysis purposes, usually based on economic indicators. International organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund classify developing countries based purely on economic indicators such as per capita income and gross domestic [Page 310]product. Other classifications, however, include human development and health-related indicators to classify countries. The classification of developing countries used here comes from the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Declaration. In 2000, 189 United Nation (UN) member states adopted the Millennium Declaration, which was codified in the form of eight goals, with 18 targets and 48 indicators, to address issues of poverty, hunger, disease, education, gender, and the environment. Given the close interrelationship between the MDGs and health, the MDG classification of developing countries will be utilized.