Communication for community reforms describes a dialogue cycle through which individuals get to define who they are, what they need, and how they can make collective actions to achieve their needs and enhance their lives. It refers to an integrated cycle where community catalysts, dialogue, and collective efforts collaborate to yield a change that progresses the welfare of the entire community ( Tufte, 2017) . The process promotes community empowerment by supporting effective and collective decision making at the community level. This paper discusses the communication process for social reforms in a health campaign to eradicate maternal mortality, the problems faced in reaching communities, and their solutions.
Communication for social change (applied in a health campaign to eradicate maternal mortalities in a community)
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The process of communication for community reforms is an iterative cycle of operations, starting with a catalyst that leads to community dialogue. A productive social dialogue leads to collective actions, which in turn lead to individual and community change that may be solutions to the society's problem ( Dagron, 2006) . A catalyst may be an innovation, information from a change agent, internal stimulus, change agent, policy, technology, or mass media. The innovation of equipment to reduce bleeding during childbirth, internal community discovery of increased maternal mortality rates, and technological knowledge of how the equipment work may be the perfect catalyst for a discussion about a community campaign to reduce maternal mortalities.
Community dialogue starts with the identification of a social problem, its impacts, and what needs to be changed. The expected problem in the current health campaign is the rising maternal mortality rate affecting the lives of diseased families, particularly the new-borns and partners of the diseased. Identification and involvement of stakeholders such as community leaders, beneficiaries of the social change, creators of the change, and receivers of the message of social change are actively engaged follows after problem identification. Stakeholders in the proposed health campaign will include leaders, women within childbearing age, and community members.
Clarification of perspectives and action planning is the next step in community dialogue. The agent of change in the health campaign will clarify the conditions that may result in maternal mortalities and activities to be planned for will include prenatal care, nutrition, and diet planning for expectant mothers, use of bleeding control gear, among others. As part of community dialogue, measures are established to maximize community participation while balancing the interests of individuals and those of the larger community. Information sharing follows where different media are used to facilitate actions and individual change to meet the desired social change. A consensus of action is the next step, which involves agreement on the course of actions among community members ( Dagron, 2006) . The actions for the health campaign to reduce maternal mortality will include nutrition and dietary education, clinical field visits to expectant mothers, and technical training on how to put-on bleeding control gear.
The final step in community dialogue is setting objectives and message tailoring. The objectives for the health campaign will include halving the number rate of maternal mortality in the next six months if all actions are taken, making the incidents rare rather than common within a year and eliminating the maternal deaths during childbirths within two years. A message communicating the desired social change will be created to remind the stakeholders of their actions and the expectations of the campaign.
Effective community dialogue leads to collective action, which describes the actual execution of action plans and subsequent evaluation of outcomes. It involves partnerships mobilization, assigning of tasks, implementation of tasks, assessment of results, evaluation of the process, adoption, or modification ( Dagron, 2006) . For the health campaign, the collective actions will include mobilization of like-minded organizations and state agencies by the change agent. The community leaders will be engaged in mobilizing qualified community members to take up specific responsibilities. In addition, implementation of the campaign will require the change agent, community leaders, and members to monitor all the tasks to ensure that all activities are done in the scheduled time, and everyone fulfils their responsibilities.
Assessment of the outcomes and evaluation is critical in collective actions. Outcomes of the campaign to reduce maternal mortalities will be assessed against the objectives. The number of such mortalities will be taken to ascertain whether the action taken had the expected outcomes. If the actions yield the objective, then the campaign will be deemed successful. If not, modifications will be made to previous phases to improve the effectiveness of actions.
Individual and social reforms are the ultimate result of the entire process. They entail improvement of knowledge and skills needed to take actions, self and collective efficacy, sense of ownership, and social cohesion ( Tufte, 2017) . The individual and social changes for the health campaign may be evidenced by a change in individual behavior such as more women attending prenatal clinics and positive reception of balanced diets by expectant mothers. The definitive social change will be the total elimination of maternal mortalities and general support for expectant women in the community.
Barriers to the campaign and solutions
The change agent spearheading the campaign to eradicate maternal mortalities at a community level is anticipated to face challenges such as the opposition of the change, particularly because the catalyst is a change agent, communication barriers, isolation, transport problems, r acial disparities, and inadequate housing facilities. However, establishing a rapport with the community during the community dialogue stage can help solve such problems like housing, racial disparities, and isolation. Local language interpreters can also be engaged as participants in the communication cycle for social change.
References
Dagron, A. G., & Tufte, T. (Eds.). (2006). Communication for social change anthology: Historical and contemporary readings . CFSC Consortium, Inc.
Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and social change: A citizen perspective . John Wiley & Sons.
