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Communicating Health

Communicating Health. COMT 492/592. Health communication. Symbolic processes by which people, individually and collectively understand, shape and accommodate to health and illness. Health Communication.

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Communicating Health

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  1. Communicating Health COMT 492/592

  2. Health communication • Symbolic processes by which people, individually and collectively understand, shape and accommodate to health and illness.

  3. Health Communication • Involves a wide range of messages pertaining to health maintenance, health promotion, disease prevention, treatment. • The messages vary with respect to: • Situations • Structures • Roles • Relationships • Identities • Goals • Social influence

  4. Basic definitions • Healthy • Unhealthy • We make sense of symbols with mixed messages: • Meanings vary depending on who you talk to, what media you see, hear or read, what you think about when you go to the gym or a restaurant, listen to a sick relative, etc.

  5. Theorizing • We are constantly theorizing – searching for explanations – from the stories we tell and hear about everyday health practices. • Narrative perspective • Stories are a way of learning • How we negotiate, maintain and rationalize healthy and unhealthy behaviors

  6. Narrating Life • Ways of talking about problems determine amount of power a person has • Victim vs. survivor • Public telling gives voice to storyteller

  7. Representing Health • “Health” • Eradication or significant decrease in diseases globally • Ideals of providing adequate shelter, food, and medical care for all citizens • “Disease” • Diagnosis, naming the problem, has symbolic importance to the individual • E.g., concept of “date rape” empowered many women to go public • E.g., labeling someone as “sick” can disempower them too

  8. Medicalization • Diagnosis can lead to aggressive measures • E.g., menopause as “estrogen-deficiency” called for synthetic hormone use that brought with it serious complications (breast cancer). • Pathologizing natural processes • E.g., homosexuality was listed as a diagnostic category in the APA manual until 1973.

  9. Health beyond medicine • Become an active participant • Conduct own health communication assessment • Interact with peers around health • Individual health needs may go beyond current organizational structures • Public arena discussions form basis of policy • Allows public scrutiny • Public campaigns can move health beyond medicine • Public moral argument

  10. Overview • Identities • Embedded in and imposed on our ideas of how the world is, how we lives our lives, including health. • Influenced by several communicative levels. • Stories • Told to frame, understand, confront, manage and change identities • Important to address constraints on voice, stigma, stereotypes and suppression

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