"This paper provides an overview of the role radio broadcasting can play in promoting better health for poor people. It has been conceptualised within the context of global efforts to reduce the burden of disease and ill health on poor people and advocates a people-centred and rights-based approach to health communications that emphasises: working with poor communities to gain an understanding of the full range of epidemiological, behavioural and risk taking factors that drive disease and ill health; designing communication initiatives that build on such interactions and which integrate social assessment data into communication outputs at all levels; multi-method approaches, i.e. a mix of interpersonal (peer education, counselling, etc.) and advocacy-based approaches combined with mass and community-based media interventions; community driven and led interventions that help the ‘vulnerable’ and ‘at risk’ to access useful and useable health information and build knowledge for social and behavioural change; poor people’s rights to information, freedom of expression and access to health services and education." (Executive summay)