Ethical Dilemmas in Health Campaigns

The design, implementation and evaluation of health campaigns involve inherent ethical concerns and dilemmas. Many of these concerns, however, are often invisible. This article presents 13 dilemmas related to 4 specific areas: (a) strategies and content of health communication campaign messages, (b) inadvertent adverse outcomes from campaign activities, (c) power and control, and (d) social values. Examples to illustrate these ethical dilemmas draw from the literature and from a study of 2 national and 3 community-based health communications interventions. The 13 ethical dilemmas are summarized as a series of practice-oriented questions to help scholars, practitioners and the those who are targeted by the campaign to identify and articulate ethical concerns embedded in health campaigns.