Macro-intervention to support health behavior: some theoretical perspectives and practical reflections.

Large-scale, integrated programs--as distinct from multiple and widespread replications of small-scale programs--require for their planning, implementation and evaluation a qualitatively different set of concepts, methods, and procedures. They are not merely the sum of the parts making up numerous applications of the same health education messages and objectives in various organizations or communities. This review of theory, research and the experience of national and community-based studies in mass media and community development for health, family planning and cardiovascular risk reduction identifies some distinctions between micro- and macrointerventions, as well as between the uses of mass media in commercial marketing and those in health promotion.