Bernard Appiah (Photo by Amy Manley)
How a Maxwell Professor Uses Radio Dramas to Improve Public Health Outcomes
Bernard Appiah, an associate professor of public health, delves into the power of combining entertainment and engagement in public health communications.
Dialynn DwyerAug. 6, 2026
Bernard Appiah didn’t set out to become a public health communication scholar. He originally trained as a pharmacist, but during his studies he took on editing a student magazine and discovered the power of communication.
He has since built a career researching how communications can change public health behavior and outcomes in Africa. Last year, that work earned him the K. Everett M. Rogers Award for Advancing Public Health Communication, one of the field’s highest honors.
Appiah, who recently earned tenure as an associate professor of public health in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, traces his approach to public health communications back to his childhood in Ghana, where his father served as the community’s gong beater, relaying messages from the village chief.
Watching his father taught him early lessons about clarity and consistency, ideas he later built into his “10+10+30” model. The communication format blends a 10-minute radio drama series, followed by a 10-minute discussion by community health workers and then a 30-minute listener call-in segment to spread health information in low- and middle-income countries.
His research has shown measurable results, including a project in Ethiopia that linked use of radio drama about childhood vaccination to higher rates of immunization.
Below, Appiah discusses the roots of his approach, the balance between education and entertainment and where he sees global health communication headed next.
Q:How did your early experience following your dad shape your understanding of communication as a public health tool?
A:
I was the youngest, so I was the only child following him as he went around giving messages from the chief to the people in the rural community. Sometimes I’d be like, “Hurry up so we can go back home and eat.” What I didn’t know was I was learning things.
The biggest is the importance of being consistent. You can’t say something in one part of the village and then go to another part and say something different. And if the information you were giving was not clear, people would keep asking you questions and you may not have enough time to go around the whole village.
Q:What is your 10+10+30 model?
A:
The use of radio for aiding or promoting behavioral change is not new. But what appears to be more of an innovation is where we now combine three components.
One component is a serial drama, which means the episode which is aired one week, the next one is a continuation until it ends. Then there is also a discussion of the drama by trained community health workers. Now, in many low- and middle-income countries, community health workers are key in health promotion, but they are not usually trained to use radio for engaging with community members.
Lastly, we have what we call phone-in programs, where people can call-in with questions. So the innovation in the 10+10+30 concept is to integrate the use of a 10-minute serial drama, 10-minute discussion of the drama and 30-minute phone-in from listeners as one complete package.
Q:What is it about that package, especially the inclusion of a serial radio drama, that moves forward public health directives that otherwise maybe wouldn’t have had as much traction?
A:
If you are using an education and entertainment approach, which combined we call edutainment, you have to make sure the education is there, but also the entertainment is there.
If you educate far too much and it’s not entertaining, people are not going to listen to it. If you entertain too much, but don’t provide the education, the message will be lost. So drama has a component of entertainment and education, but it is key that when the drama is aired, there has to be a discussion of the drama.
And there’s engagement, which is not one-way. When you put a drama on the radio, all the listener can do is just listen. So if we want to enhance engagement, then we should also give a time for listeners to call into the program, either to ask questions, comment on it or share their experiences.
Q:What do you try to instill in your students about working in public health communications, especially if they are working with communities different from their own?
A:
One thing I tell students is when you go into a community, you may have your own notion, but give them the opportunity to talk and hear from them. Because what you hear may be helpful in terms of sustaining what you are doing.
And also, I tell them if you are doing some cool stuff, it doesn’t matter whether you are getting an award or not. As long as you are doing something to impact lives, just enjoy it.
Q:What do you see as the biggest unmet need right now in global health communications?
A:
In many low- and mid-income countries, radio is one channel that can break the urban and rural divide. So there is a value in sticking to the traditional communication channels.
However, we also need to adapt because younger people might not be listening to radio a lot, but they may be on podcasts or TikTok. So integrating traditional concepts into new media would also be useful.
We need to do more engagement where we can hear from those receiving the communication, and then we can use that information to make our communications strong.
