Communication at the Core of Effective Public Health.

This article focuses on the discipline of public health communication. Public health recognizes that health is profoundly affected by the social, political, environmental and behavioral factors which people live. Public health communication embraces this ecological perspective by encouraging multilevel communication strategies and interventions, such as tailored messages at the individual level, targeted messages at the group level, social marketing at the community level, media advocacy at the policy level. In addition public health communication strategies are often combined with other intervention efforts, such as community organization or coalition building, to produce multilevel public health interventions. Public health communication professionals have a responsibility to communicate well with each other. To facilitate the exchange of information and the translation of public health communication research to practice, public health communicators need to become more visible and vocal in their professional organizations. With its transdisciplinary nature, ecological perspective, change orientation, and audience-centered philosophy, public health communication has the potential to make significant contributions to the health of the public.