The availability and utilisation of health communication strategies; case study: Entebbe municipality

Abstract

Prior to the emergence of modern medicine, health communication was primarily informal. It was mainly used by practitioners of folk medicine to communicate their ingredients and techniques to everyone for the management of disease and injury. Objectives and question(s) The broad objective was to determine the influence of health communication strategies in promoting health within Entebbe municipality. Specific objectives were: to ascertain adoption of the different national health communication strategies in promoting health; to establish the capacity of management in the implementation of different national health communication strategies in health facilities, to assess the relationship between health communication strategies and health promotion interventions/practices among communities. Methodology An evaluation study using descriptive qualitative and quantitative design. A census -7 study units and sample size for quantitative was 500. It consisted of health workers and clients/patients. Service point sampling was applied to sample the patients who came to health facilities while purposive sampling was applied for the health workers. Main results Not all the units had all the six communication strategies limiting integration. BCC was not utilised but only basic health education. The approach was top down with little community participation. Edutainment was liked by the population for instructing them on certain health concerns and policy changes. eHealth/ mHealth communication was not made use of thus a lost opportunity. There were no health educators in Entebbe Municipality.