ABSTRACT

Given its historical origins and colloquial usage, the term campaign is in some ways a curious moniker for describing the activities of the contemporary health-communications practitioner. The Latin word campus and the Late Latin word campania both meant “flat country” and these were the antecedents of the Old Northern French word campagne and the English word campaign (Partridge, 1966). Why flat country? Because that was the typical setting in which battles were fought. In the days of antiquity, a campaign was a specific military intervention defined in both topography and time. More than a battle but less than a war, a campaign would endure for a period of one or two years, during which time troops commonly would remain in flat country, sometimes a single field, to fight toward some objective-a river, a walled city, perhaps a port-whose capture was deemed of particular strategic importance for the larger war effort (Scott, 1864). With success, an especially harsh winter, or the end of their term of active service, troops would return to quarters, an event signaling the end of the campaign.