Designing health promotion messages applied health psychology

Abstract

A number of health promotion practices have been developed to increase health awareness and to improve un- healthy lifestyles. It is important to examine how health professionals, including physicians, nurses, public health nurses, physical therapists, school teachers, and psychotherapists convey effective health promotion messages in research and practice. Knowledge about health psychology is expected to contribute not only to understanding the communication process of professionals providing health promotion messages to their target audiences, but also to contribute to conveying effective health promotion messages regarding psychological readiness and the in- terests of target audiences. The purpose of this literature review was to introduce （a） two theoretical models to understand the give and take of health promotion messages between health promotion professionals and target audiences, and to present a perception-cognition model of health promotion messages, （b） to introduce the pro- cess of designing effective health communication materials, and （c） to discuss implications for dissemination and implementation strategies. It is hoped that this study would make a significant contribution to knowledge about the application of health psychology to health promotion practices.