Best practice recommendations for constructing educative and persuasive health and nutrition messages: a rapid review

Abstract

Globally and in Australia, diets low in vegetables, legumes and minimally processed core foods and high in ultra-processed foods are widespread and shown to be harmful to human and planetary health⁽¹⁾. Research suggests that important aspects of nutrition knowledge, such as the concept of ultra-processed foods, are not widely understood by adults, hampering public health efforts at improving diet quality⁽²⁾. The World Health Organization recommends sequential health communication strategies that start with awareness raising as an important first step to promote healthy behaviours⁽³⁾. Therefore, the aim of this rapid review was to identify best practice recommendations for the development of persuasive and educative health and nutrition messages for awareness raising among adults. A secondary aim was to identify best practice recommendations for features of persuasive and educative messages. Four academic databases were searched in June 2024. Websites of Australian and international health organisations were searched in April-July 2024 to identify relevant grey literature. Review articles that provided evidence or recommendations for developing persuasive health or nutrition messaging for awareness raising and grey literature that proposed communication strategies or frameworks, published after 2010 were eligible for inclusion. Twenty-seven reviews and four grey literature reports were included, of which 24 reviews and four reports focused on general health messaging and five reviews were specific to nutrition. Results reveal strong support in the literature for audience segmentation and tailoring of messages to the target audience. Ongoing formative research is also consistently recommended, including research to inform audience segments, message content, testing of messages with stakeholders and consumers and refinement of messages based on feedback. Dissemination of messages in mass media channels, including traditional and social media, and use of multiple channels for message repetition is considered best practice for awareness raising messaging. Additionally, dissemination of messages through well-known, credible and trusted messengers who are relevant to the target audience was consistently recommended. There were mixed findings on whether loss or gain framed messaging should be used, and to address this, use of a combination of both framings was recommended. Communicating the gist or bottom line of information, rather than overly precise didactic facts, was advised to improve audience understanding and message acceptance. Furthermore, narrative messaging was recommended over didactic messaging because it is more engaging and preferred by audiences. Finally, health and nutrition messages that are concise, simple and constructed with plain language are considered best practice. This review provides a practical synthesis of best practice recommendations for health and nutrition messaging for use in academic research and real-world health and nutrition promotion settings. Findings can be used to inform the translation of dietary recommendations into persuasive messages, in accordance with priority work to advance the Decadal Plan for the Science of Nutrition⁽⁴⁾.