learningforsustainability.netManuals on supporting practice change from the public health sector
- Pink Book - Making Health Communication Programs Work This is a planners guide, a 131-page guide written by the US Department of Health and Human Services in 1992, and reprinted endlessly. It's a crash course in how to plan and execute a social marketing campaign. This publication begins with a useful warning about what health communication programs cannot do:
* compensate for a lack of health care services
* produce behaviour change without supportive program components
* be equally effective in addressing all issues or relaying all messages.
It then outlines steps and tools that would be quite familiar to any communication professional. For instance, it proposes a 6-step cyclic process which relies strongly on pre-testing and evaluation of communication messages and materials. - Collaborative Leadership website Collaborative leadership embraces a process in which people with different views and perspectives come together, set aside narrow self-interests, and discuss issues openly and supportively in an attempt to find ways of helping each other solve a larger problem or achieve broader goals. It is an evidence-based strategy that has proven particularly effective in public health planning that involves multiple stakeholders who share a common interest. This site, maintained by the National Public Health Leadership Development Network (NLN) at Saint Louis University, provides guides and training modules to support upskilling in improving collaborative leadership in public health.
- The Health Canada Policy Toolkit for Public Involvement in Decision Making The need to ensure meaningful public involvement in policy development and service delivery is recognized by Health Canada as one of the key challenges of governance today and in the years ahead. Canadians are better educated and informed than ever before and they expect to have more say in public policy decision making. This is particularly so in relation to health. There is widespread public demand for greater public involvement and access to information, and a sense that the resolution of most major national problems would be aided by engaging citizens. This document is provided in response to these changing public expectations. It aims to help health officials improve their ability to consult, engage, listen, persuade and reframe issues so that the results of our work better meet citizens' expectations and needs. This requires strengthened capacity to inform, educate and involve the public and to get feedback on how we are doing. Clearly, citizen engagement as a public involvement technique goes beyond communication and consultation. It involves citizens, and not just the public as represented by a multiplicity of stakeholders, associations, lobbyists and interest groups, in policy formulation, priority setting and program delivery.
- The Manchester Community Engagement Toolkit This is a practical guide to carrying out community engagement. It’s been developed with and is for use by, officers within Council and our partners such as the Police, Health services, community organisations and groups. The Toolkit is designed for you to dip in and out as required, not necessarily read it from cover to cover. It’s broken into different sections. This includes: the core skills of community engagement; key ways of engaging with different interest groups, and the different types of engagement (informing, researching, consulting, involving, devolving and empowering), with tools to achieve each type.
- What is social marketingThis page from Health Canada provides a concise introduction to social marketing.
