Browsing by Author "Mukisa, Ronald"

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    Celebrity health promotion messaging : novel opportunities to engage youth in the developmental origins of health and disease
    (African Sun Media, 2020) Macnab, Andrew J.; Mukisa, Ronald
    This chapter is a personal view seen from disparate viewpoints of age and culture. Two proponents of health promotion, one a Ugandan youth with firsthand experience of the burden of illness among African children and the other a Canadian academic with a lifetime spent treating sick children, speak to the place and potential of celebrity in the promotion of health among youth. Since 2011, school-based health promotion programmes conceived at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) have been introduced into many communities in Uganda. These initiatives are seen as an example of innovative health promotion with the potential to give the next generation health knowledge and skills that will translate into an important measure of ‘health independence’ for them in their future lives. A regular component of these programmes enables schools to introduce new topics through teacher-guided in-class discussions about health; in this way, pupils were introduced to elements of the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) agenda, and then asked to discuss which ‘messages’ they saw as most relevant to them, and which ‘messengers’ could deliver these messages with the greatest impact. Amongst the messengers, celebrities were identified as particularly influential; young people said they would listen to what a celebrity said about health, lifestyle and behaviour. Expanding on these discussions, pupils quoted health and lifestyle messaging that they already knew from listening to celebrity-recorded music videos. Here we describe examples, from a Ugandan perspective, of this form of celebrityendorsed health messaging contained in music videos; these are the songs young people told us they listened to and knew the promotional messages they contain. National music celebrities, whom these young people identify with, have recorded a variety of videos with content advocating specific health behaviours, endorsing physical, emotional or spiritual health and calling for individual and collective action to address challenges such as maternal deaths related to childbirth and infant mortality. Some artists even raise awareness of difficult but very important social issues such as gender inequity, sexual harassment and domestic violence through their music. Music videos resonate with youth, and celebrity recordings appeal as they combine young people’s love of music with their fascination of the aura of celebrity. We review the production concepts, content and messaging that make these celebrity music videos particularly powerful, and also suggest future directions where the engagement of celebrity messengers could offer a conduit for innovative delivery of DOHaD-related messages, and an effective way to impart knowledge and impact health behaviours among youth.
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    Photo-essays : a creative format for effective communication
    (African Sun Media, 2020) Stothers, Lynn; Mukisa, Ronald; Macnab, Andrew J.
    Scientists and educators regularly face the challenge of effectively, concisely and interestingly communicating their ideas and findings, and the need to engage readers unfamiliar with the concepts or issues they want to describe. In the context of advancing the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) agenda, effective communication is essential, particularly when aiming to engage government agencies, inform leaders in the health care professions, and motivate organisations able to drive change in the community. Hence, it is important to consider approaches that might make key DOHaD concepts and health promotion strategies more readily accessible to any target population. In this chapter, we share our experience from a collaboration between the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (PWIAS) at the University of British Columbia, and STIAS at Stellenbosch University to explore ways to make research and global public health issues accessible and meaningful to a broad readership; we identified the genre of photo-essay as an established and valid format, and describe its origins and principles. A photo-essay effectively presents a broad range of facts and data to varied audiences because the format principally relies on the impact visual images have. When well-chosen images are combined with appropriate captions and a concise explanatory text, the resulting composition can engage and inform a wide range of readers, and in a way likely to allow even those unfamiliar with the topic to rapidly gain an overall understanding of the information and recommendations presented. Photographs are a powerful way to furnish evidence because they expand the scope of the information provided and uniquely engage individual readers. The reader cannot be made to look at the images in the presented order, nor can the time spent on each image be indicated. So, we suggest that a photo-essay offers a very individual, informative yet flexible format for sharing ‘what works and why”, and how, and under what circumstances it works in the context of DOHaD.