Code Your Own Communication, and IPM, and ELM - oh my!

I personally found the homework assignment, Code Your Own Communication, very insightful inasmuch as we all have a vague idea of what we, as public health students, consider health communication but when putting it into words, and seeing the difficulties therein, it made it very apparent how complicated and obtuse it can be. It was also a great way to get us thinking about the goals of this course and what we would like to take away from the class. I thought the food advertisements in the grocery store was a great example. In addition, another student voiced my own concerns that arose during the project: if something is anti-health is that health communication and is something like an ad for McDonald's fries an anti-health message (the purpose of the ad is to get you to eat fries, which aren't healthy, but the ad isn't purporting that they are...so, where does that leave us?).

Going over the five dimensions of health communication theory in McGuire's IPM (source, message, channel, receiver and destination) helped clarify some of the issues into which I ran with my definition and will be extremely useful for us as we continue forward with our group assignments and focus groups. I gathered the basic information about IPM versus ELM from the reading but it was so dense and technical that the significant points were lost at times. Shelia's presentation really broke it down to the most integral parts of the models and how they are actually applicable to health related communication.

One area that I would like about which I would like to know is how certain theoretical models help inform the creation and dissemination of certain health messages. In class we went over a few examples of where along PAPM or SOC communication messages might vary, but I think that there is significantly more in this area that could prove helpful to us.