Citation

Petraglia J, Galavotti C, Harford N, Pappas-DeLuca KA, Mooki M. Health Promot. Pract. 2007; 8(4): 384-393.

Affiliation

Emory University's Center for the Study of Public Scholarship, Atlanta, Georgia 30307, USA. joseph@ghcomm.org

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Society for Public Health Education, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1524839907301402

PMID

17804825

Abstract

Entertainment-education (EE) is a popular vehicle for behavior change communication (BCC) in many areas of public health, especially in the developing world where soap operas and other serial drama formats play a central role in encouraging people to avoid risky behavior. Yet BCC/EE developers have been largely unable to integrate behavioral theory and research systematically into storylines and scripts, depending instead on external, technical oversight of what should be an essentially local, creative process. This article describes how the Modeling and Reinforcement to Combat HIV/AIDS project at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed a set of tools through which creative writers can exercise greater control over the behavioral content of their stories. The Pathways to Change tools both guide scriptwriters as they write BCC/EE storylines and help project managers monitor BCC/EE products for theoretical fidelity and sensitivity to research.

Language: en