Strategies Of Health Communication In My Country In The 1990s

In China, many researchers have mentioned in their research articles that health communication in China’s mainland started from The UNICEF Cooperative Project on Health Education in 1989. As the first national project implemented by the Government to introduce the concept of health communication in China, what communication strategies were adopted in this cooperative project? What innovation in theory and practice did it carry out? What impact did it has on the localization construction of health communication in China? In this paper, the writer took the project as a case in order to study the characteristics of China’s health communication strategies in the 1990’s and its impact on the sustainable development of China’s health communication.This paper argues that this project is a beneficial attempt that consciously used communication theory to guide our practice in the propaganda for health knowledge. It introduced the concept of health communication into China to guide the concrete practice of health education. It is a subject-centered health communication concept because it investigated the subjects’needs, based on which it established communication strategies, chose communication channels and produced communication materials. Through social mobilization, government intervention and other means to involve social forces in health communication, it provided a strong social and policy support. It has enriched and expanded China’s health education channels by using a comprehensive transmission channel "centered on interpersonal communication and supplemented by mass communication". Health professionals were the main implementers of health communication so that health communication took on obvious health characteristics. Focusing on monitoring and evaluation of health communication activities and using method with the qualitative and the quantitative study combined, it broke the limitations of hygiene propaganda and revealed the scientific nature of health communication. It provided a good basis for the scientific development of health communication.Although it was the first truly meaningful national health communication activity in the last century, this project established the localization characteristics of health communication in China because of its pioneering status in health communication area. In spite of its inevitable weakness, nowadays it is still the main strategy in health communication and plays an active role in our heath communication practice. Today, the disease spectrum is changing, the new themes of health communication are coming, the communication technology and the communication environment are changing. All these bring forward new thoughts for the health communication in China.