**Introduction**

**Chapter 1**

**Provisional chapter**

**Introductory Chapter: Global Health Communication -**

**Introductory Chapter: Global Health Communication -** 

The current art and science of social and behavior change (SBC) has benefited from the many lessons learned and documented over the years from a wide variety of disciplines and approaches—including anthropology, psychology, marketing, communication research, social marketing, and more recently behavioral economics and human-centered design. Over the years, SBC has accumulated a robust body of compelling evidence, consisting of both scientific research, and documented success stories that demonstrate how the tools and approaches of SBC have effectively influenced behavior change in almost every area of public health, as well as related sectors. The many creative products and events that have been developed within the field make it easy for us to see that art and creativity play an important role in SBC. However, the science behind SBC is less visible but has, arguably, been even more important to the

In what might be the birth of social marketing 1951, Weibe famously asked the question "Why can't we sell brotherhood the way we sell Coca Cola?" [1, 2]. As in Weibe's famous paper, SBC has, from its earliest days, sought to identify, document, and implement the most effective means of influencing individual and community adoption of improved practices, whether these were technological or behavioral innovations, to improve health status. Central to his inquiry was the search for an approach that could provide results at scale for good value. And these efforts have been successful. Working in concert with the introduction of innovations from the biomedical field, SBC has contributed to significant reductions in mortality and increases in lifespan in every area of the globe. In recent years, we have seen an accelerated effort to document the evidence for SBC's effectiveness [3]. For example, in 2013, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the UNICEF, hosted the *Evidence Summit on Enhancing Child Survival and Development in Lower- and* 

> © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.80674

**Focused Issues and Challenges**

**Focused Issues and Challenges**

Anton Schneider and Muhiuddin Haider

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80674

**1. Introduction**

field's success.

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Anton Schneider and Muhiuddin HaiderAdditional information is available at the end of the chapter

#### **Introductory Chapter: Global Health Communication - Focused Issues and Challenges Introductory Chapter: Global Health Communication - Focused Issues and Challenges**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.80674

Anton Schneider and Muhiuddin Haider

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Anton Schneider and Muhiuddin HaiderAdditional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80674
