Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Communicating health information in terms of the benefits of engaging in a behaviour or the costs of failing to engage in a behaviour can persuade people to practice safe sexual health practices including using condoms, getting a pap test, and getting vaccinated. Yet, health messages are rarely correctly written by applied health organizations such as public health. This means that it is important to research how to effectively communicate the findings from sexual health communication research to public health agencies. The proposed research will consist of three studies aiming to evaluate and strengthen the use of proper sexual health messages within 36 public health agencies in Ontario. In Study 1, I will evaluate the content of existing sexual health websites and brochures from public health agencies to determine whether their messages are correctly conveying information. In Study 2, I will develop a program that will teach the same Ontario public health agencies used in Study 1 to correctly create sexual health messages. The effectiveness of the program will be measured by re-evaluating the agencies' sexual health brochures and websites. In Study 3, I will develop an understanding of the causes of whether or not public health agencies correctly create sexual health messages. I will assess what resources and materials help and hinder agencies' ability to correctly use sexual health communication research. The results of the three studies will help improve the health of Canadians by ensuring that public health agencies are using the most effective research evidence and by providing insight as to how to effectively provide public health agencies with scientific recommendations.