Health Communication

Some key components of comprehensive cancer control plans include the development of goals, objectives and strategies to address the cancer burden within the state, tribal organization or territory. These goals, objectives and strategies can help spur collaboration between partners. During a webinar from the Geographic Health Equity Alliance in partnership with the Advancing Cancer and Rural Equity (ACRE) lab, three presenters discussed different ways in which evidence-based strategies have been implemented to improve cancer screening in rural areas.

The American Cancer Society recently published a revised version of the PSE Change Guide: Policy, Systems, and Environmental Change in Comprehensive Cancer Control. This guide incorporates the latest research, case examples and resources from partners across the country. It explains what the PSE change approach is, the process for fostering coalition capacity to implement PSE changes and explores key takeaways and themes from an extensive search of the recent literature.

In an early celebration of World No Tobacco Day 2022, CADCA’s Geographic Health Equity Alliance (GHEA) partnered with the Truth Initiative to present “Getting to Know Truth: Resources for Inspiring Lives Free from Smoking, Vaping and Nicotine” on May 25th, 2022. This webinar introduced participants to free resources that are available via the Truth Initiative. These resources included the truth® campaign and its evaluation; Vaping: Know the Truth (a vaping prevention program); This is Quitting (a text message based vaping cessation program for youth and young adults); and community, and youth engagement programs.

ChangeLab Solutions has recently released their collection of Framing Tobacco Disparities resources. These evidence-informed resources are intended to help tobacco prevention and control staff and their partners learn how to frame tobacco-related health disparities messages in ways that reduce racial biases and foster support for effective policy solutions.

Dr. Jordan Alpert presents “E-Cigarette Instagram Posts and Their Youth Appeal,” a webinar recording and accompanying article on the characteristics of popular social media posts related to electronic cigarettes on Instagram. Dr. Alpert shares the implications his research findings have for public health programs addressing media literacy skills to educate young adults about electronic cigarette content viewed on social media.

The tobacco industry is infamous for using marketing and messaging to market their products to children and marginalized populations, and to influence tobacco legislation. For public health advocates to be successful in fighting against these harmful strategies, we must ensure that when we communicate, we aren’t yelling into the wind, but are strategic in our purposes and using the best of what social science teaches us. This month’s feature article explores how to use story building to move beyond awareness-raising and inspire belief and behavior change.