When Health Education Goes Horribly Wrong: Bad PSAs

A lot of global health is about educating people on health topics, and encouraging them to make choices that support health. It’s hard to get your messages across in a way that people pay attention to and act on. Very, very hard.

Everyone’s gut instinct is to make health education scary. They’re convinced that scaring people is the way to get them to change their ways. Here’s an example

That’s not what the data shows, though. Scaring people just makes them shut down and stop thinking about the topic. What works is scaring them a little bit and showing an easy solution.
Here’s an ad that does it well. Lower production values, extremely goofy. But – people like it, and it makes them more aware of the importance of condoms.

Two more thoughts. One, don’t treat your audience like they’re stupid. I think even the intended audience of children for this one would realize robots don’t have any body parts which would be affected by tobacco.

And, lastly, try not to be an oblivious racist.