TABLE 1.

A Message Design Strategy Framework for Raising Awareness of Social Determinants of Health (SDH) and Population Health Disparities

Design Strategy	Brief Summary of Conclusions from Existing Research
Message framing (see Iyengar 1991)	•A message can frame population health or population health disparities as being caused by internal factors (within control of the individual), external factors (beyond the control of the individual), or some combination of the two.
	•Message frames influence how people think about who is responsible for causing social problems, who is responsible for addressing these problems, and ultimately what policies (if any) should be implemented.
Narratives (see Hinyard and Kreuter 2007)	•Narratives (stories) are a fundamental way that human beings interact and exchange information.
	•Narratives can help overcome resistance to persuasion by reducing counterarguments, facilitating message recall and comprehension, and providing opportunities for observational learning through identification with characters.
	•The evidence base for narrative impact is small, and many studies have relied on student samples.
Visual images (see Messaris 1997; Zillmann 2006)	•Evocative visual images can improve message recall, create emotional responses, and contribute to sustained changes in beliefs about and attitudes toward social issues.
	•Evocative visual images can also distract attention away from a message's central theme or activate negative stereotypes of populations.
	•Images can be used to perform at least four persuasive functions: (1) invite generalizations, (2) invite causal interpretations, (3) highlight contrasts, and (4) create analogies.
	•The evidence base for effective visual persuasion strategies is small.