Steps in planning and developing health communication campaigns: a comment on CDC's framework for health communication.

This reviews the efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to integrate effective health communication into its programs that are designed to change behaviors. Although the 10-step framework for developing and implementing the Centers' health communication programs is both practical and comprehensive, it is suggested that a reversal of steps 2 and 3 is a more logical sequence, is more consistent with the literature and, more importantly, could avoid misapplications of the framework by less experienced practitioners. Comment is also made on the dynamic nature of health communication planning and development, a point not made explicit in the Centers' framework.