Principle: Actionable
Move audiences to action
Tactics to apply to make your communications actionable
Move audiences toward action: the communications continuum
WHO communicators can create messages and strategies that help people make decisions and take action to protect their health. Each health issue is different, so a new approach needs to be planned for each one. Communicators understand that people who are not aware of a health risk are not likely to act after simply hearing recommendations to reduce risks. Also, people rarely accept complicated health recommendations after only hearing or reading about them once. Using step-by-step communications campaigns that follow a specific sequence, communicators can move people towards the desired action incrementally.
Increase awareness
Communicators first need to build awareness of existing or emerging health threats or benefits. If people who make health-related decisions are not aware of the risks, they will not act to protect themselves or others.
To achieve the benefits of new behaviours and policies, health care decision-makers first need to know what those behaviours and policies should be. Communicators can build awareness using a variety of methods.
- Increase the level of understanding of health risks and promote the steps that protect people’s health.
- Widely disseminate messages that are simple, easy to recall, repeated and attention-getting.
- Use mass media and social media channels.
- Widen the reach of social media by designing messages that can be shared by partner organizations and networks of friends, family members and co-workers.
- Compete for attention by using credible message sources. For each health issue, identify which health information sources the target decision-makers believe are credible. These sources are not necessarily WHO staff or local health experts: they may be organizations, family members, faith leaders, or peers.
- Highlight WHO’s unique expertise on the issue, making the Organization a trusted source of information.
Support an appropriate understanding of the risk
Decision-makers need to believe that a health risk is real and that they are vulnerable.
The target audience and authorities will not take action if they think the risk only affects other groups or is not important. Communicators can use the following approaches to increase personal relevance of the issue.
- Create a connection to the health issue at a personal or community level.
- Show the health problem’s effect on people who are like the target audience.
- Create a sense of urgency to prompt decisions and action.
- Direct media attention to an incident which the target audience can relate to. For example, to engage parents of young children, direct media attention to an outbreak among young children who were not vaccinated.
- Use messages to show the health threat is close to home by highlighting community members who have experienced or are susceptible to the health problem.
- Consider the target audience’s perspective on risk when planning messages about a health threat. For example, focusing on the possibility of death is likely to be more effective with older populations than with youth.
Promote knowledge of solutions
People who feel susceptible to a health threat are more likely to look for ways to protect themselves.
However, sometimes decision-makers overreact to a health risk. Unless communicators offer effective solutions, the target audience may act in ways that are counterproductive, causing harm or using resources unnecessarily. In these cases, communicators need strategies to match the perception of susceptibility to the real magnitude of the health risk. Communicators can assist in these areas to ensure the target audience knows what behaviours and policies reduce risk and susceptibility.
- Support decision-makers’ implementation of protective measures by using messages that describe the desired action and explain where to find information and resources that support implementation.
- Consider which sources the target audiences trust as experts. For example, they may be health care providers, mothers or community faith leaders, for example.
- Use interpersonal communication channels to enhance learning of protective skills.
- Encourage interactive conversations with the target audience so people can ask questions.
- Take into consideration the following when communicating with the target audience.
- People learn in different ways.
- People have different levels of education and different socioeconomic backgrounds.
- Plain language and visuals enhance understanding of solutions and speed adoption of the recommended behaviours. For example, photographs and infographics can show a sequence of required steps, and probability statistics can be presented in more understandable formats.
Instil the confidence to act
When people have confidence, they believe they can take the appropriate actions, and that those actions will make a difference.
There are various ways communicators can ensure individuals and organizations believe they can perform recommended behaviours or implement policies to promote health.
- Use WHO stories of individuals or organizations that model the desired behaviour or policy-making action.
- Use well-known strategies to influence audiences’ confidence. For example, promoting the ability to try a new behaviour without risk, observing someone else who is respected practising the health behaviour, using a credible source to encourage the behaviour and self-empowerment messages.
- Have a clear call to action that breaks the accomplishment of the desired health outcome into simple steps. Ensure that each step in the call to action is attainable for that target audience.
- Teach skills, if necessary. Begin with behaviours that have minimal skill requirements and continue working on others that require more complex effort. For policy-makers, begin with steps that require minimal initial investment, but reap visible rewards, to motivate towards the next step.
- Create opportunities for individuals and policy makers to practise skills or develop plans with someone who has already mastered them. Policy-makers should be encouraged to learn from the successful policy implementation of decision-makers who have already acted on WHO guidance.
- Enhance confidence and feelings of control by showing people what they can do individually, even as part of a larger campaign. Decision-makers are more likely to act if they can act independently.
- Show that taking action will make a difference. Design messages that clearly show that WHO-advised behaviours and recommended actions are worth the investment of time and effort.
Influence social norms
Social norms can make it easier or harder for audiences to adopt recommended health actions and policies.
Social norms are the rules, beliefs, expectations and behaviours supported by friends and communities. They can come from peer attitudes, social or community beliefs, and work contexts. Most people will find it difficult to adopt recommendations that are not connected to their social beliefs and expectations. Communicators can use the following approaches to align recommendations and benefits with relevant social and cultural norms.
- Encourage trusted influencers and messengers who are close to the audience to act as models and champions for the desired behaviours and policies.
- Identify where decision-makers feel pressure to conform to norms that contradict recommended actions. Work with the target audience to develop tactics to reduce that pressure.
- Increase message credibility by promoting trusted messengers who changed their behaviours to align with recommendations.
- Create messages that describe how communities, organizations and peers support the recommended actions.
Reinforce benefits to overcome barriers
If people think that the barriers to the recommended actions are too high, they may not act to solve health problems, improve health, or prevent disease.
Communicators can help the target audience see the benefits of protective health actions and lower the barriers for their uptake in the following ways.
- Increase confidence in institutional support for recommended behaviours and policies.
- Design communications materials and activities at individual and community levels to address barriers. Examples of barriers can include lack of time, problems with logistics, costs, lack of urgency and lack of awareness.
- Reduce the time between when the target audience adopts a recommended behaviour and the reward. Any significant time gap can disrupt this connection.
- Focus communications on midpoint milestones and rewards to close the time gap between adopting the behaviour and the reward.
- Promote all the benefits that result from the recommended behaviour, not just the health benefit. For example, getting a flu vaccine may help keep you healthy and reduce the potential need to take unscheduled time off work.
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