"Hard -to-Reach" Audience

Before starting the MPH program at San Diego State University, I had the impression how exciting and easy it would be to promote health. I assumed people's lifestyles would be changed easily by educating them and simply providing them with knowledge on health related topics. Well, it's not that easy at all. While Public Health is a very exciting field, it can also be very challenging; and one of the challenges that I've found to be most difficult is how to target "Hard-to-Reach" audiences?
The “hard-to-Reach” audience is a label given to those who have limited access to communication channels, have poor information processing skills and are people of ethnic minorities or persons of low socioeconomic status. Although it is a challenging job to be able to target all audiences out there as a communicator, however, there should be ways to reach out to these groups of people who are labeled as “Hard-to-Reach”. I really liked this paragraph from my Health Communication Readings and feel like I want to share it with all of you as my professor shared it with us in class:

“I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn’t poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived. Then they told me deprived was a bad image, I was underprivileged. Then they told me underprivileged was overused, I was disadvantaged.

In the final panel the old man says, “I still don’t have a dime.”

I thought this was so funny and sad at the same time. I’ve realized that in our society people are constantly given a label and thus live their life carrying labels around. It’s almost like a sense of entitlement. For instance, if you go to the doctor and he or she doesn’t diagnose you with anything, you feel cheated. It might not apply to everyone but from my observations at least it’s true. Anyways, the point I was trying to make is that why start labeling people and putting them into categories instead of finding better ways to help them and solve problems.

Ethnic minorities are also considered as “Hard-to-Reach” audience. Well, a way to approach this problem is to become more familiarize with different ethnic backgrounds. Since the United States already consists of such diverse population, it would be very useful for not only Public Health communicators to get to know another’s culture and social norms but for everyone!

I’m originally from Iran and I still meet people who have no idea where Iran is on the planet. But of course since the beginning of Iraq war, they get it mistaken with Iraq now. And the funniest thing is that some still think that people in the Middle East ride camels. It’s always so pleasant for me to learn and meet people of all nationalities and learn about their culture, religion, country, language and much more. Hopefully, one day I can apply all this knowledge that would enable me to reach and help everyone.