Evaluating the Effectiveness of Public Health Messaging in the Immigrant and Refugee Community in Minnesota

Effective communication of health messages is essential in public health. Public health messaging must include accurate information and be available in different languages, specifically when designing health communications products for immigrant and refugee populations. Using in-depth interviews, this paper examines the methods that public health professionals use to evaluate the effectiveness of the health messages that they create for immigrants and refugees. Participants recognized the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of health messages as well as the difficulty of conducting an effective evaluation due to the lack of tools and resources for evaluation. Some public health professionals use different methods such as pre- and post-surveys, direct feedback, online feedback, and feedback through community liaisons. The results also suggest that many organizations do not prioritize the evaluation of the effectiveness of health messages when programs are being developed and many public health professionals are not trained to conduct evaluations. There is a pressing need to create a framework for the evaluation of the effectiveness of health messages that public health professionals who create public health communication products and messages for immigrant and refugee populations can use.