Community Radio: An Engaging Tool for Health Promotion

Background:This field research is based on an existing intervention in one of the southern Indian villages named ‘Saragur’. A Community Radio (CR) “Jana Dhwani” (Voice of the people) that started in February 2012 now reaches nearly 40 rural and tribal villages. 

Program background: The broadcasting programs disseminate information mostly about maternal and child health. Engaging target audience and ensuring community participation was deemed to be a big challenge in the earlier period of broadcasting. As people started recognizing the importance of the broadcasted information and entertainment from active participation, they started being part of content creation and program production. The village based intervention enabled people to voice their opinions about various health issues and public health services. 

Evaluation Methods and Results: The intervention led to additional interviews and panel discussions with health service providers over the Community Radio, in the local language, enabling discussions to become more accessible to all local radio listeners. Rural and tribal women shared their perspectives and ideas through short soap operas and folk songs that addressed mostly maternal issues.

Conclusions: Community radio offers a way of communicating directly with target audiences like women, youths, farmers, etc. In any medium, but particularly in the case of audiovisual tools, the best message is one that has been conceived and delivered by the participatory group itself. As a result, this paper will demonstrate how the use of community radio has helped to bridge the communication divide that existed between health program managers and the local population regarding access to relevant maternal and child health information.

Implications for research and/or practice: This intervention demonstrated that, CR can be a tool of change operated in the community, for the community, about the community and by the community. It has the power to educate and engage local audiences about issues that affects their lives: health, education, water, human rights, etc. It encourages local development not only within the communities but also between policy makers, regional NGO’s and target audiences. CR allows villagers to make their voices heard directly, regardless of their level of education or social standing. It has become a tool to unite people irrespective of the differences in their culture or religion.