The Effectiveness of Health Messages Presented by the Mass Media in the Urban Audience of Qaemshahr, Iran

Background and objective: Health messages refer to meassages that directly or indirectly deal with personal and social health of people including healthy lifestyles, prevention or treatment of diseases. This study aimed to probe the effectiveness of health messages presented by the mass media on Qaemshahri audience. Methods:The current study is a descriptive-survey one.The sample of the study, 450 randomly selected participants, consisted of all citizens 16 years onwards.The researcher-made questionnaire, whose validity was established and Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was estimeated to be 83%, was used to collect data. Running SPSS, one sample t-test was used to analyze the data. Results: Audiences have influenced the health messages that was presented by the media in awareness (M=3.92), educational (M=3.46), and persuasive (M=3.29), Also, the effectiveness of health messages among women (M=3.71) was more than men. Individuals with higher levels of education assessed their benefit from health messages better. Conclusion: Health messages provided by the mass media have been useful and effective for the audience in awareness, education and persuasion aspects. Therefore, it is suggested thatthe rate of programs related to health education be increased in the media, especially radio and television. Paper Type:Research Article