The Health Communication Unit - Persuasive Communication

Persuasive or behavioural communication includes efforts to persuade specific audiences to adopt an idea or practice. This includes social marketing techniques.

THCU resources

Mass and Interpersonal Communication: Buzz for Behaviour Change
This document, from THCU in collaboration with Thomas W. Valente and Anthony Lombardo, provides an overview of mass media and interpersonal communication theories and their implications for designing health communication campaigns. (PDF, 122kb) New February 22, 2007

Changing Behaviours: A Practical Framework.
June 2004. Urmila Chandran, Larry Hershfield, and Jodi Thesenvitz
This update of the December 2000 resource describes and provides examples for the eight conditions required to change personal health behaviours. (PDF, 46 kb) Updated June 16, 2004

Ethics of Health Communication: Workshop Materials
Slideshow from the January 2001 Special Topics workshop by Francois Lagarde, which provided ways to identify ethical dilemmas and consider practical solutions.

Tools of Change--Social Marketing Skills: Workshop Materials
Slideshow from the January 2001 Special Topics workshop by Jay Kassierer, which provided a brief introduction to social marketing, a step-by-step planning methodology, a toolkit of proven techniques, and a free social marketing web site.

Ontario Health Promotion E-mail Bulletin
The Ontario Health Promotion E-mail Bulletin (OHPE) is a free weekly newsletter for people interested in health promotion produced by the Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse and THCU. We provide information on workshops, conferences, job postings, projects, issues and resources. Learn how to search for information in our archives here.

THCU Literature Searches
When needed, we contract a wonderful librarian named Barbara Scott to do literature searches on various topics that our clients ask us about. The requests from the last couple of years are posted at the page above.

Non-THCU resources

Fostering Sustainable Behaviour
This site consists of six resources: an online guide, which provides valuable information on the use of community-based social marketing to design and evaluate programs to foster sustainable behavior; searchable databases of articles, cases, graphics, and downloadable reports on fostering sustainable behavior; and discussion forums for sharing information and asking questions of others. Visitors are asked to sign in, but it is a brief, no-fee process. Added October 8, 2003

CDC's Prevention Marketing Initiative
"Prevention Marketing is CDC’s "brand" of social marketing...[and] has as its foundation the belief that, working with specialists in the sciences of behavior and communications, community members themselves are best able to develop their own HIV prevention programs and to manage issues that could hamper program effectiveness" [from the website]. Added October 8, 2003

Turning Point
Started in 1997, this an initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Its mission is to transform and strengthen the public health system in the United States by making it more community-based and collaborative. Turning Point partners have formed five National Excellence Collaboratives, one of which focuses on social marketing. On the website you’ll find numerous documents about social marketing including Social Marketing and Public Health: Lessons from the Field, a Social Marketing 101 slide show, and a Social Marketing Resource Guide. The CDCynergy - Social Marketing Edition CD-Rom is also available for order here. The collaborative is also working on a developing a complete list of social marketing competencies. A draft is available online, and visitors are invited to comment on the draft. Updated October 4, 2004

Shouting to be heard: Public Service Advertising in a New Age
This February 2002 paper by The Kaiser Family Foundation covers a variety of topics. One notable section by Dr. Charles Atkin and Laura Schiller discusses the impact of Public Service Announcements. Added August 2002

Centre for Advanced Studies in Nutrition and Social Marketing
There are a number of interesting resources on this website, including "Promoting Nutrition and Physical Activity Through Social Marketing: Current Practices and Recommendations," "Evaluating Nutrition and Physical Activity Social Marketing Campaigns: A Review of the Literature for Use in Community Campaigns,""Annotated Bibliography of Data Sources to Assist in Formative Research on Diet and Physical Activity," and "Introduction to Social Marketing Handouts." Added August 2, 2002

The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
'This social marketing campaign is designed to influence attitudes and behavior towards illicit drugs. It is supported by a $1 billion bipartisan commitment from Congress, which has allowed for the widest possible reach with pre-tested, focused messages and a Behavior Change Expert Panel to ensure that leading edge behavioral science is reflected in all elements of the Campaign. Nearly a year of research went into designing the Campaign and high quality evaluation of the campaign is ongoing. The campaign’s website is a wealth of practical information and tools that can be applied to many health promotion issues. Added August 2, 2002

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
These centres offer a listing of all their health communication campaigns. They present campaign audiences and goals and provide links to or contact information for getting more information or the materials themselves. Topics range from physical activity promotion to HIV/AIDS prevention to skin cancer. Added July 25, 2002

U.S. Centre for Advanced Studies in Nutrition and Social Marketing
This site has numerous publications describing nutrition and physical activity social marketing best practices, evaluation results, and audience analysis sources. They also have a series of short handouts that provide an introduction to social marketing. Added July 18, 2002

Social Marketing Institute (U.S)
This institute was created to advance the science and practice of social marketing. It manages a very active list serve and the site contains a variety of working papers, conference proceedings, job postings, and case studies. Added July 18, 2002

Weinreich Communications
This US site is full of social marketing information, links, job posting,s and conference descriptions. Added July 18, 2002

Social Marketing Network
This a resource for the social marketing community is intended to serve the needs of researchers, educators, health professionals, and interested members of the public by providing a variety of resources. This site represents the activities of the Partnerships and Marketing Division (PMD) of the Communications Marketing and Consultation Directorate at Health Canada. The site provides definitions links to many social marketing resources and numerous case studies. Added July 18, 2002

Social Marketing Listserv
Anyone interested in social marketing should subscribe to this list started by Georgetown professor, Dr. Alan Andreasen. The listserv is a forum for talking about social marketing research, practice, and teaching. To join, subscribe to istproc@listproc.georgetown.edu through email and type subscribe soc-mktg in the message body.