Summary

In this Study Session, you have learned that:

• Communication is a process by which two or more individuals or parties share or exchange ideas, views, knowledge, feelings and experiences on a selected issue or problem to come to the solution.
  
• Health communication is the art and technique of informing, influencing, and motivating individual, institutional, and public audiences about important health issues.
• Communication contains six elements like sender, message, channel, receiver, feedback and effect.
• There are various types of communications, and we have classified based on the ways of message flow as one-way communications and two-way communications. Based on the number of people involved, we have classified communication as intrapersonal, interpersonal and mass-media communications.
• Communications can reach the target audiences by the following forms or methods or ways: oral/verbal ways, written ways and non-verbal ways.
• There are different approaches to communications: informing, educating, persuading and prompting/entertaining.
• There are basic principles of communications like shared perception between the sender and the receiver, involvement of sensory organs, face-to-face communications, two-way communications, message clarity, correct information, and completeness of the idea.
• There are different barriers that hinder the effectiveness of the communications. Such barriers can be physical, intellectual, emotional, environmental and cultural.