Planning Tools

The Role of Health-promoting Radio

The following diagram identifies the various elements that comprise Health-promoting Radio.

Figure 2. Health-promoting Radio Tasks

Figure 2 shows that social change and redefinition is brought about by the combined thrusts of health promotion, community development, and advocacy. Interdependency between health promotion, advocacy and community development redefines issues in terms of health and resolves them through social and community change.

Health promotion goals co-ordinate efforts that lead to more equitable health policy, support and delivery of services.

The three areas of advocacy (Figure 2) include political lobbying, building coalitions of stakeholders and using the media for advocacy, raising awareness and promoting public discussion of related issues.

Community development strategies (Figure 2) include consensus building and empowerment of communities. In health promotion, community development is defined as "the process of community members identifying health needs and priorities, and the development and planning of the interventions" .

Community development and health promotion share—and are linked by—core assumptions of social justice and equity, enabling, equipping, community participation and social responsibility.

The role of radio programming in health promotion is to marry the distinctive tasks and outcomes of radio with the core assumptions of health promotion. We can now define health-promoting radio as: