ABSTRACT
Social awareness of public health issues has reached an unprecedented level, given the serious and aversive consequences of disease, disability, and even death that are potentially preventable. Attitudinal and behavioral modifications are required to manage such potentially preventable maladies, unprecedented efforts have been mounted to develop communication campaigns aimed at disease prevention and control and substance abuse abatement. Interactive media can be programmed to link messages with related data banks, and thereby provide detailed explanations of subject areas end users find particularly interesting or difficult to understand. Finding ways to tailor prevention messages to specific audience segments is difficult with a reliance on traditional media sources. The majority of health promotion and disease prevention messages use brochures, television and radio spots, billboards, and magazine ads to promote better, healthier lifestyles. New communication technologies incorporate the interactivity of the microcomputer with traditional media and other new information technologies to form an innovative information delivery system simultaneously using multiple communication channels.
