Health communication may be defined as
“The art and technique of informing, influencing, and motivating individual, institutional, and public audiences about important health issues. The scope of health communication includes disease prevention, health promotion, health care policy, and the business of health care as well as enhancement of the quality of life and health of individuals within the community” - Healthy People 2010, p. 11-20
“An area of theory, research and practice related to understanding and influencing the interdependence of communication (symbolic interaction in the forms of messages and meanings) and health related beliefs, behaviors and outcomes.” Cline, R. 2003
“Health communication is a multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach to reach different audiences and share health-related information with the goal of influencing, engaging and supporting individuals, communities, health professionals, special groups, policy makers and the public to champion, introduce, adopt, or sustain a behavior, practice or policy that will ultimately improve health outcomes.” Schiavo, R. 2007, p. 7
or the mechanism by which health messages are communicated from experts in the medical and public health fields to the people who can be helped by these messages.
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Health communication is concerned with “the powerful roles performed by human and mediated communication in health care delivery and health promotion” (Kreps et al. 1998). Clear communication is essential to successful public health practice at every level of the ecological model; intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, organizational, and societal. At each level there are a variety of communication channels which must be considered, from face-to-face to mass communications. The social contexts in which health communication occurs are also widely varied and can include (but are not limited to) homes, schools, doctor’s offices, and workplaces. The recent explosion of new Internet communication technologies (particularly through the development of health websites (such as Medline Plus, Healthfinder, and Web MD), online support groups (such as the Association for Cancer Online Resources), web portals, tailored information systems, telehealth programs, electronic health records, social networking) and mobile devices (cell phones, PDAs, etc.) means that the potential media are ever changing.
Although health communication is not new, the field has developed as its own entity over the past 30 years or so. Key events include (most taken from (Kreps et al. 1998)):
1975 – International Communication Association establishes the Therapeutic Communication Interest Group (which later became the “Health Communication” Division)
1979 - The American Academy on Physician and Patient (later renamed the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare) was established to promote research, education, and professional standards in patient-clinician communication.
1985 – National Communication Association forms the Commission for Health Communication, which later became the Health Communication Division
1984 – Health Communication textbooks begin appearing: Kreps & Thornton (1984), Sharf (1984), and Northhouse & Northhouse (1985)
1989 – First peer reviewed journal devoted to health communication, Health Communication. Followed in 1996 by The Journal of Health Communication
1995 – Undergraduate and graduate health communication majors begin to be offered. Tufts University School of Medicine offers the first Master of Science in health communication together with Emerson College
1998 - The Health Communication Working Group of the American Public Health Association was established to examine the role of health communication in public health promotion.
1999 - The National Cancer Institute (National Institutes of Health) establishes the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB) in their Behavioral Research Program, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control. The National Cancer Institute identifies health communication as an extraordinay research opportunity for promoting cancer prevention and control.
1999 - The National Cancer Institute establishes the Health Communication Intervention research program, funding seven multi-year research projects to study innovative strategies for communicating cancer information to diverse populations.
1999 - The Journal of Medical Internet Research is established to study health and health care in the Internet age.
2002 - The National Cancer Institute establishes the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) biennial representative national survey of consumer health information seeking, acquisition, and use to evaluate progress in cancer communication and to guide health communication intervetnion.
2003 - The National Cancer Institute announced establishment of four national Centers of Excellent in Cancer Communication Research (CECCRs) providing five year funding for research centers at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, and Saint Louis University. The CECCR program was designed to make major advances in health communication research and application, as well as to train the next generation of health communication scholars.
2004 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) establishes the National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM)for promoting and conducting health marketing and communication research to support national health promotion efforts.
2004 - The Coalition for Health Communication (CHC) is established as an inter-organizational task force whose mission is to strengthen the identity and advance the field of health communication. CHC represents the ICA and NCA Health Communication Divisions and the APHA Health Communication Working Group.
2007 - The first dedicated Ph.D. program in Health and Strategic Communication is offered by the George Mason University Department of Communication.
2008 - The National Cancer Institute announced re-issuing of the national Centers of Excellent in Cancer Communication Research (CECCRs) program. They provided five years of funding for five research centers (at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, Washington University, St. Louis, and Kaiser Permanente, Colorado. The new CECCR program was designed to continue progress in advancing in health communication research and application, as well as to train the next generation of health communication scholars.
2009 - First serious efforts put forth by Home Controls' HealthComm Systems to educate consumers regarding affordable, unobtrusive home technology allowing the aging to remain at home for months or years longer than ever before
2009 - The Society for Participatory Medicine (SPM) is established to promote participatory medicine by and among patients, caregivers and their medical teams and to promote clinical transparency among patients and their physicians through the exchange of information, via conferences, as well through the distribution of correspondence and other written materials. The SPM publishes the Journal of Participatory Medicine.
2009 - The Murrow Center for Media and Health Promotion is established at Washington State University.
Scholars and practitioners in health communication are often trained in disciplines such as communication studies, sociology, psychology, public health, or medicine and then focus within their field on either health or communication. Practitioners are pragmatic and draw from social-scientific scholarship, theories from the humanities, and professional fields such as education, management, law and marketing (Maibach 2008).
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Healthy People 2010. Volumes 1 and 2, Chapt. 11, p 11-20. http://www.healthypeople.gov/document/HTML/Volume1/11HealthCom.htm.
Cline R., American Public Health Association (APHA) Health Communication Working Group Brochure, 2003. http://www.healthcommunication.net/APHA/APHA.html. Retrieved on January 2010.
Schiavo, R. Health Communication: From Theory to Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.