ReviewThe Milbank quarterly2008
Message design strategies to raise public awareness of social determinants of health and population health disparities.
Review in The Milbank quarterly, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 62 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
62 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 211 citations in OpenAlex.
- Advocacy for health equity: a synthesis review.The Milbank quarterly · 2015Pooled it
- Randomized Trial Evaluating Targeted Photographic Health Communication Messages in Three Stigmatized Populations: Physically-Disabled, Senior, and Overweight/Obese Individuals.Journal of health communication · 2018Trial
- How to Fix a Broken Health Care System: Pathways to Maximize Health and Well-being for All.Diabetes care · 2026Review
- Changes in public awareness of racial, economic, and educational health disparities between 2007 and 2023 among Wisconsin adults.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- The ACHIEVE Program: Bringing Chicago Youth and Community Organizations Together to Impact Local Disparities.Journal of community health · 2024Article
- Reclaiming narratives of empowerment around Black maternal health: a strengths-based, community-informed focus group study.Ethnicity & health · 2024Article
- Necessary, burdensome, or threatening? Awareness of Black-White disparities in health care access and self-rated health for Black and White Americans.The American journal of orthopsychiatry · 2024Article
- Building a "We" With Deliberative Dialogue in Pursuit of Health for All.American journal of public health · 2023Article
- Framing risk and responsibility: Newspaper coverage of COVID-19 racial disparities.Newspaper research journal · 2023Article
- Beliefs around the causes of inequities and intergroup attitudes among health professional students before and after a course related to Indigenous Peoples and colonialism.BMC medical education · 2023Article
- Article
- Nutrition and Health Programming and Outreach in Grocery Retail Settings: A Community Coalition in Action.Nutrients · 2023Article
- The moment is now: Strengthening communities and families for the future of our nation.Children and youth services review · 2023Article
- Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in COVID-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March-June 2020.Race and social problems · 2023Article
- Public Education Can Be Used to Increase Support for Equity in Cannabis Policy.Cannabis (Albuquerque, N.M.) · 2023Article
- Serving the public? A content analysis of COVID-19 public service announcements airing from March - December of 2020 in the U.S.Preventive medicine reports · 2022Article
- Highlighting COVID-19 racial disparities can reduce support for safety precautions among White U.S. residents.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Using first-person narratives about healthcare workers and people who are incarcerated to motivate helping behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Designing and Implementing a Curriculum to Support Health Equity Research Leaders: The Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Experience.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Evidence-Based Message Strategies to Increase Public Support for State Investment in Early Childhood Education: Results from a Longitudinal Panel Experiment.The Milbank quarterly · 2021Article
2 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
contextRaising public awareness of the importance of social determinants of health (SDH) and health disparities presents formidable communication challenges.
methodsThis article reviews three message strategies that could be used to raise awareness of SDH and health disparities: message framing, narratives, and visual imagery.
findingsAlthough few studies have directly tested message strategies for raising awareness of SDH and health disparities, the accumulated evidence from other domains suggests that population health advocates should frame messages to acknowledge a role for individual decisions about behavior but emphasize SDH. These messages might use narratives to provide examples of individuals facing structural barriers (unsafe working conditions, neighborhood safety concerns, lack of civic opportunities) in efforts to avoid poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, and other social determinants. Evocative visual images that invite generalizations, suggest causal interpretations, highlight contrasts, and create analogies could accompany these narratives. These narratives and images should not distract attention from SDH and population health disparities, activate negative stereotypes, or provoke counterproductive emotional responses directed at the source of the message.
conclusionsThe field of communication science offers valuable insights into ways that population health advocates and researchers might develop better messages to shape public opinion and debate about the social conditions that shape the health and well-being of populations. The time has arrived to begin thinking systematically about issues in communicating about SDH and health disparities. This article offers a broad framework for these efforts and concludes with an agenda for future research to refine message strategies to raise awareness of SDH and health disparities.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.