Countries often develop posters, flyers, leaflets, brochures, booklets, messages for health education sessions, radio broadcast or TV spots, etc. as a means of promoting desired, positive behaviours in the community. In some cases, these activities are part of a communication plan within a comprehensive strategy, while in many others they are isolated actions.

These initiatives are commonly referred to broadly as “Information, education and communication (IEC)” activities.

An operational definition of “IEC” refers to a public health approach aiming at changing or reinforcing health-related behaviours in a target audience, concerning a specific problem and within a pre-defined period of time, through communication methods and principles (definition adapted from “Information, education and communication – Lessons from the past; perspectives for the future”).

This definition helps emphasize the need for IEC initiatives to:

have a clear objective (the specific behaviour to change or reinforce);

target a specific audience (e.g., mothers of children below five years old);

address a “specific problem” (e.g., offering increased fluids and continuing feeding a child with diarrhoea), rather than attempt to change many problems at the same time;

set a timeframe within which the results (“change in behaviour”) are expected to occur.

The “problem” must be well defined, as that is what the IEC intervention aims to address. Thorough understanding of what people do, what prevents them from following the desired practices (“barriers”) and what facilitates them (“enabling factors”) is essential before designing a communication intervention.

It is obvious that this requires a detailed plan, the implementation of which needs to be monitored closely according to pre-set indicators, and then properly evaluated.

Activities following these principles and meeting the above definition can be considered IEC initiatives, with a higher potential to achieve the stated objective than the others. Thus, for example, the development of a poster without the following elements would not be a structured IEC initiative: audience analysis; testing; a plan with objectives, indicators and targets; a clear target audience; a distribution plan with follow-up; regular feedback through monitoring; and a formal evaluation.

The advantage of a public health manager’s thinking in this way is to be outcome-oriented, use resources more efficiently and learn important lessons for the future from this experience.

Information, education and communication – Lessons from the past; perspectives for the future