Evaluating the Impact of JECRC 90.8 FM Community Radio Station's Health Awareness Programs on College Students in Nearby Areas

Abstract

It would be convenient to say that today, Community radio has emerged as an important medium for promoting health awareness and behavior change in semi-urban and rural populations. This paper studies the impact of JECRC 90.8 FM’s health awareness programs and its effectiveness on college students in its broadcasting areas and focuses on three core dimensions, which includes enhancement of health awareness, changes in health behaviors, and trust in community radio as an authentic source for information related to health.Using a mixed-method approach, which includes quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews with a sample of 200 college students, this research tests three hypotheses, including: community radio helps to raise awareness regarding health issues, encourages healthier behaviours among people, and is perceived as a trustworthy platform. Data which was obtained, indicates a statistically significant increase in health awareness (t = 11.90, p < 0.001), a notable improvement in health behaviors (t = 12.66, p < 0.001), and good amount of trust and engagement with the community radio (t = 9.28, p < 0.001).These results highlight JECRC 90.8 FM's importance in bridging the gap between traditional health communication methods and the needs of today's youth, by offering them culturally relevant, participatory, and interactive programming.However, this is also true that the unique strengths of community radio puts it in a good position to help support public health efforts, with its ability to reach grassroots-level people, build trust and tackle hyper-local issues. It also focuses on areas for potential strengthening, including broader outreach, use of digital tools, so as to increase interactivity, and other targeted programs to reach different demographic groups.This work is an addition to literature on community-based health communication, as it validates the community radio as a medium of communication for health awareness and behavior change among youth audiences. It also suggests a few measures that policymakers, health authorities, and educational institutions can take, so that they can utilize the power of community radio to promote the public health. Further research can figure out the impacts of community radio in a long run, the number of project beneficiaries as against other mediums and projects, future community radio projects with scalable models to institutionalise the socio-economic changes facilitated by community radio interventions.