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Communicating Health

Dive into the symbolic processes shaping individuals' health perceptions. Explore narratives influencing health behaviors, from diagnosis to public discourse, beyond medicine's realms. Unveil the power of storytelling and representation in 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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