Communication: concepts, practice and challenges

Abstract

Communication involves transmission of verbal and non-verbal messages. It consists of a sender, a receiver and channel of communication. In the process of transmitting messages, the clarity of the message may be interfered or distorted by what is often referred to as barriers. Health communication seeks to increase knowledge gain. This is the minimum expectation and acceptable requirement to demonstrate that learning has taken place following an intervention using communication. Once knowledge gain is established, it is assumed that the individual will use the knowledge when the need arises or at an opportune time. There is evidence in several school-based health interventions demonstrating that young people who got exposed to specific information, e.g. against smoking or engaging in harmful practice, tended to posses decision or refusal skills. Communication requires full understanding of behaviors associated with the sender and receiver and the possible barriers that are likely to exist. There are also challenges with establishing the source of what is to be communicated since this is a pre-requisite for program success. Often, communication (i.e. messages) originated from professionals or the government and ignore involving the intended beneficiaries. As a result, those communication activities seeking to impart knowledge and skills and/or behavior change often fail to realize the ultimate goal of behavior change because the beneficiaries find no relevancy in the activities.

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