IMC 627
Explore various levels of the healthcare campaign and marketing process. Students learn the basic types of health campaigns, theories of health behavior change, issues in designing/evaluating healthcare marketing and the effects on health outcomes.
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of IMC 627, students will be able to:
- Identify factors that drive individuals’ health decisions.
- Recognize and be able to apply relevant communication and behavior change theories to an integrated health campaign.
- Develop effective communication strategies between healthcare professionals and the public.
- Integrate components such as advertising, branding, credibility, public relations and the marketing mix into an effective health campaign.
- Design a basic campaign utilizing health communication and marketing strategies.
- Gain practical skills in the evaluation of health campaigns.
Course Topics
- Introduction to Healthcare Communication & Marketing
- Theory Review of Health Behavior Change
- Audience Segmentation Strategies for Healthcare Communication & Marketing
- Research Analysis for Healthcare Communication & Marketing
- Objectives/Goals/Marketing Mix in Health Communication Campaigns
- Developing Health Messages
- Selecting Health Message Channels, Evaluating & Implementing a Health Communication & Marketing Plan
What students say about IMC 627:
“IMC 627 offers students an opportunity to put IMC campaign development basics like segmenting an audience, gathering research and setting goals and objectives into practice in a specific field: healthcare. Case studies in most of the core IMC classes revolved around creative ways that large commercial brands try to get customers to buy their product. In contrast, this course focuses on communicating healthcare-related messaging, primarily marketing health behavior, marketing health organizations and services, and marketing health products and pharmaceuticals. As people live longer, they have more health issues. The world of healthcare is changing quickly and integrated marketing is vital to success. As a marketing manager at an academic medical center, studying IMC from a healthcare perspective connected more to what I do daily. I appreciated having a course that explored healthcare communication, behavior change models and theories of learning and persuasion and offered me a chance to apply what I have learned about IMC campaign development to this specific area.” - Jane Clinton
Top 3 Course Takeaways
- Segmentation matters. You can't just globally promote a campaign and expect it to perform well.
- It's important to have a research base.
- It's a very practical course with a variety of writing activities because you won't perform just one type of task in a healthcare communications role.
Instructor Insights
Chapters
- 2:56 - Why Should Students Consider Courses in the Healthcare Space?
- 4:28 - Top 3 Takeaways
- 5:54 - Workload Intensity
- 6:40 - How to be Successful in this Course
- 7:11 - Personal Teaching Style
- 7:52 - Favorite Aspect of Teaching in the Program
- 8:37 - Why is it Important to Differentiate Yourself in this Industry?
