A Multisensory Multilevel Health Education Model for Diverse Communities

Abstract

Owing to their enormous capacity to improve health and save lives, effective health promotion frameworks have been at the forefront of public health research and practice. A multilevel focus, as exemplified by the Socio-Ecological Model (SEM), is one common denominator among these frameworks. The SEM highlights important social and ecological influences on health behavior by delineating the different levels of influence. These include public policy, organizational, community, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels, which, when considered during the development of health promotion campaigns, especially those that focus on health education, strengthen the potential influence of that campaign on targeted behaviors. However, the SEM lacks a complimenting framework for understanding the role of conventional and unconventional approaches to health education; that is, how to design a health education intervention that considers both the context, such as the social and ecological levels of influence, and the best approaches for developing and delivering the health education in a manner that optimizes their effectiveness in today’s modern and increasingly diverse world. Addressing this gap, the current article presents an integrative Multisensory Multilevel Health Education Model (MMHEM), which incorporates three key domains—(1) Art (innovativeness/creativity), (2) Culture (cultural tailoring), and (3) Science (evidence-based), while promoting the importance of considering the socio-ecological levels of influence on targeted behaviors. Using a successful health education intervention, called the Hip Hop Stroke, we deconstruct the Multisensory Multilevel Health Education Model and discuss its potential role as a guide for developing public health education interventions.

It Starts with a Conversation: The Importance of Values as Building Blocks of Engagement Strategies in Community-Centered Public Health Research

“…This then gives way to an opportunity to co-create the significance and meaning of the study with participants, making the initiative more likely to be successful in the long run. Researchers can benefit by connecting fields, such as public health, psychology, multimedia, design and the arts, among others, to meet the challenges of community-centered initiatives [ 7 ]. It is important to remember that community engagement often starts from a conversation and a simple question: “Who is this person that I am talking to?” Presence and respect for participants often move the conversation forward and helps research participants to feel heard, seen, and understood.…”

“…In recent years, health researchers have started recognizing the necessity to develop effective community engagement strategies through both relationships with community members and knowledge and expertise outside of academia [ 6 , 7 ]. This approach is crucial for social change because it facilitates multidisciplinary knowledge co-creation to solve social problems that affect real people and their communities.…”

Creating a Scalable Physical Activity Breaks Resource Through the Multisensory Multilevel Health Education Model: H.Y.P.E. The Breaks!

“…This article presents the theoretical underpinnings of H.Y.P.E. The Breaks!, which utilizes the MMHEM (Williams & Swierad, 2019; Figure 1). The MMHEM was specifically designed to guide the development of health education interventions targeting diverse communities.…”

“…( H elping Y oung P eople E nergize): an engaging collection of culturally tailored 2-, 6-, and 10-minute–long dance and hip-hop–based physical activity videos, which can be performed in a classroom, in a gymnasium, or at home. These instructor-led hip-hop dance videos designed for economically disadvantaged ethnic minority children are deconstructed through the lens of the multisensory multilevel health education model (MMHEM; Williams & Swierad, 2019), including their potential influence at different socioecological levels of behavioral influence (Williams & Swierad, 2019).…”

Limited knowledge and distrust are important social factors of out‐patient’ s ‘inappropriate diagnosed seeking behaviour’: a qualitative research in Shanghai

“… 25 On the contrary, lacking knowledge can result in inappropriate health‐seeking behaviour by limiting individuals' considerations and behavioural reactions 26 . Thus, public policy, organization and community are used to focused more on health education to increase individuals' knowledge which is expected to show stronger influence on public's targeted health‐seeking behaviour 27 . According to the reported ‘education–activation–engagement–empowerment framework’, knowledge from education can empower individuals' appropriate health‐seeking behaviour by increasing their effective activation and engagement 28 …”