Introducing Health Promotion Agenda-Setting for Health Education Practitioners

Abstract

Health professionals must continuously address health promotion issues using the latest strategies and research. Currently in health care, too often an underdeveloped and under supported agenda prioritizes problems, issues, and solutions. Further, an ongoing competition exists among issues due to an undocumented agenda-setting process to gain the attention of media, public, and policy makers. Agendasetting is based on the belief that the media influence what we talk about, rather than controlling what we think, and how often an issue appears in the media influences the policy agenda (Dearing & Rogers, 1996). If an issue is “salient” and receives frequent or expansive coverage by media, audience members will talk more about that issue than one that is not as salient. A Health Promotion Agenda-Setting approach works to specify and prioritize problems and alternative solutions for increasing media exposure and setting agendas for “sustained” courses of action, (Kozel et al., 2003). The crucial link between agenda-setting and the process of establishing effective legislation, policy, and programs has been researched. However, many health practitioners do not understand what agenda setting is, nor how to apply agenda setting within the field of health education. Professional development in Health Promotion Agenda-Setting offers health education practitioners new knowledge, skills, methods, and opportunities to strengthen practices that influence the public health agenda and transform health promotion leadership.

Challenges in Covering Health Disparities in Local News Media: An Exploratory Analysis Assessing Views of Journalists

“…Thus, media perform an important social control function [17], influencing the agendas of citizens, community leaders, and policymakers alike [12]. Recent studies have elucidated the media’s agenda-setting role for scientific and risk communication [18], health care issues [19], health promotion [20], marijuana [9], chronic kidney disease [21], and emergency preparedness [22]. These studies highlight the crucial link between media agenda-setting and the prioritization of issues in establishing effective legislation, policy, and health programming.…”

Engaging Moms on Teen Indoor Tanning Through Social Media: Protocol of a Randomized Controlled Trial

“…Past research on indoor tanning policy has examined industry compliance and policy impact on mothers and daughters [29,30,95-109], but has not evaluated health communication interventions to maximize the impact of indoor tanning policy. Studies of policy interventions on sun safety of youth in general are rare, limited to a few studies on policy adoption by US and Australian schools [110,111] (including a successful intervention by our team [112]) and recreation centers [113,114]. …”

Social Justice in the Borderlands

“…The agenda-setting approach enhances the ability to compete for attention from mass media, public leaders, and policy makers in order to improve public policy and more importantly, influence resource allocation (Kozel et al, 2003). Agenda-setting strives to focus attention on the innovation, diffusion, and adoption of change processes to move the issue to the critical mass stage of adoption (Kozel, et. al., 2006).…”

“…Despite the necessity of system-level change, noting how many participants indicated each of the three factors, underscores the significance of using all three factors for a successful agendasetting approach. Hence, applying the HPA-S characteristic, design, and mechanism factors will increase the probability of not only getting at the policy making "table" earlier, but making it increasingly possible to stay at the table by providing tools for stating ones agenda in such a way that it bubbles to the top of the agenda hierarchy (Kozel et al, 2006).…”