Health information has never been more available. It arrives through social media, streaming platforms, workplace programs, pharmacy apps, and every device within reach. The volume is not the problem. The problem is that the volume has not changed behavior.
The World Health Organization via EPI News reports that noncommunicable diseases accounted for 74% of deaths globally in 2023, up from 58% in 2000. The primary modifiable risk factors, including physical inactivity, poor diet, and tobacco use, are well documented and widely communicated. The information exists. The behavior does not follow.
This is the central problem in health communication today. People are not failing to understand the message. They are failing to act on it. Facts alone do not produce habit change. Repetition, emotional connection, and relevance do.
With a Public Relations and Marketing background, Burgess Harrison has spent decades working in health technology, telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and healthcare administration software. He has seen the gap from the inside. The systems deliver information. The patient does not necessarily integrate it. That experience led him to build Health Is for EveryBODY, a health equity campaign that approaches the problem from a different direction.
“There is no shortage of information,” Harrison says. “There is a shortage of attention, and there is a shortage of connection.”
Attention is the scarce resource. According to the Pew Research Center, 52% of Americans say they are worn out by the amount of news, and 60% have reduced the amount of news they get overall. Health communication is competing in that environment. Most of it is lost.
Harrison’s argument is that the health sector has not adjusted to the conditions it operates in. Public health messaging still leans on facts, instructions, and warnings. Those tools work when the audience is already paying attention. They do not create attention. Entertainment and emotion do. “If a building was on fire, you wouldn’t read a long announcement about all the specific protocols,” Harrison says. “You would take action to leave the building.”
He points to the way commercial brands operate. A soft drink is carbonated water with sugar and caffeine. The product is not what is sold. What is sold is a feeling. Health communication, he argues, has not learned that lesson. It presents health as a duty rather than a value. The audience hears the instruction and moves on.
Harrison states that prevention needs a brand. He proposes a different model for reaching people. Health messages delivered through comedy, music, film, art, and storytelling have a different effect on the audience. They create an emotional response. That response is what opens the door to behavior change.
The challenge is not unique to individuals. Harrison frames health as a shared responsibility because health outcomes affect everyone. Communicable diseases spread through communities. Preventative behaviors are imperative to public health to protect neighbors as well as the individual. And the economic consequences are collective. Lack of optimum health reduces productivity, increases absenteeism, and slows economic growth.
Corporations are already treating productivity as a priority. The Deloitte Global Health Care Outlook 2026 found that 90% of health care executives name productivity improvement as a top priority, driven in part by a projected global shortage of 4.5 million health care workers by 2030. The pressure is not only on individuals. It is on the public and private health systems that care for them.
“Prevention deserves a brand and a larger share of the conversation for the same reason,” Harrison states. “Sadly we have a ‘sick care’ system built around treatment, and not prevention.” Screening and early intervention are proven to reduce long-term costs and improve outcomes, but the incentives in most systems still point toward treatment. Harrison argues that prevention has to be made attractive, not just recommended.
The campaign takes a deliberately broad view of what health includes. Physical health, mental well-being, oral health, the environments people live in, and many more disciplines. That includes the relationship between humans and animals. Research on the human-animal bond has documented effects on mental health, emotional support, and quality of life. Veterinary professionals and animal health advocates are part of the wider conversation for that reason.
Health Is for EveryBODY was built around a message that avoids the debates that usually divide people. It does not take a position on healthcare policy. It does not engage with the arguments about who pays for what. It starts from the claim that everyone should have the opportunity to live a healthier life, and that everyone can do something to help.
Harrison is direct about why that framing matters. Public conversations about health tend to focus on where people disagree. He argues that the more productive starting point is where they agree. Once that ground is established, the harder questions become easier to address.
Although Health Is for EveryBODY is formally launching now, it has been in development for several years, with early contributors including artist Ofobuike Okudoh, who created the first foreign-language version of the campaign’s logo, and physician Dr. Luqman Lawal, who serves as an advisor. Their involvement reflects the initiative’s commitment to bringing together creative and professional perspectives, as it continues to seek partners, collaborators, and organizations willing to help amplify its message.
What Harrison argues is that the next phase of health communication will not be won by producing more information. It will be won by producing information that people actually want to engage with. The audience is not waiting to be lectured. It is waiting to be moved.
The question is not whether the message matters. It is whether anyone will hear it.
