Engaging Contextual Approach to Understand What Factors Contribute to Effective Health Promotion Campaigns Targeted for Rural Communities Liew Yu Mei Postgraduate Research Student Faculty of Economics and Business University Malaysia Sarawak Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia jasmine8six@hotmail.com Rohaya Mohd-Nor Senior Lecturer Faculty of Economics and Business University Malaysia Sarawak Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia mnrohaya123@gmail.com Abstract— There has been a serious lack of research about the effectiveness of health promotion campaigns in the context of rural communities in Sarawak. This study attempts to address this limitation in the literature. The research aims to investigate what factors can influence the effectiveness of public health promotion campaigns targeted for rural communities. In this paper, we present and discuss the proposed conceptual framework and research design to undertake this research. We specifically engage the contextual approach proposed by Pettigrew to explore and identify factors that can affect the rural communities’ perception and understanding with regard to health information dissemination via health promotion campaigns. I. INTRODUCTION The occurrences of many incidents of global outbreaks throughout the world have raised various concerns at the international level. The influenza pandemic outbreak is continued to be monitored closely by the World Health Organization (WHO). In the past, the first pandemic outbreak, known as the Spanish flu, had occurred in 1918 and were reported to cause death for nearly 50 to 100 million people (Taubenberger and Morens, 2006). Then, there were Fort Dix outbreaks and the Russian flu outbreaks that caused serious concerns among the international agencies, particularly WHO (Gatherer, 2009). In 2009, another pandemic outbreak, known as the swine flu or influenza A (H1N1) had caused about 17,000 deaths all over the world (Roos, 2010). Just recently, it was reported in the news that two Chinese women from Beijing, China have died from the H1N1 flu strain (Reuters, 2013). In the Malaysian context, the H1N1 influenza outbreaks have received a close scrutiny by the Malaysian Government through the role of the Malaysia Ministry of Health (MOH). MOH has made a serious attempt to curb the spread of the influenza by engaging health promotion campaigns to disseminate up-to-date important information to the public. During the critical period where the rise of influenza outbreaks was noted, the MOH has applied variety ways to communicate with the communities including the rural communities about the influenza risks and its preventive measures. In addition to distributing brochures, pamphlets and posters, as well as engaging the traditional media, the MOH also created a dedicated website at https://h1n1.moh.gov.my as part of the government initiatives to educate the public about the influenza risks and how to curb its spread. In this paper, we present the work-in-progress of our research related to the understanding about what factors contribute to the effectiveness of health promotion campaigns targeted for rural communities. Our aim in this paper is to present and discuss the proposed conceptual framework and research design to undertake this research. The objectives of the research are as follows: (1) to identify factors that affect rural communities’ awareness about the influenza outbreaks; (2) to identify factors that can influence the effectiveness of health promotion campaigns targeted for rural communities of Sarawak; (3) to determine the relationships between these factors and the effectiveness of health promotion campaigns; and (4) to propose recommendations to relevant stakeholders with regard to constructing effective health promotion campaigns targeted for rural communities of Sarawak. This paper is organized as follows. Firstly, we present related literature review and briefly discuss the literature gaps. Secondly, we elaborate the contextual approach proposed by Pettigrew and justify why engaging the contextual approach is appropriate and viable for the study. Thirdly, we present the This research is funded under the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme FRGS/05 (32)/804/2011 (73) and is supported by the University Malaysia Sarawak.