Recognizing health communication as a crisis discipline: Taking health communication inquiry seriously

Abstract

This commentary article describes the crucial role of health communication research and education for improving the delivery of care and the promotion of health. While health communication research programs and publications have continued to grow rapidly over the past 50 years, this important work may not always be well designed and directed to be optimally useful for improving health outcomes. In this article I argue forcefully that future health communication inquiry should be intentionally conducted to examine and help resolve serious emergent societal challenges to effective health communication that are needed to guide evidence-based refinements in health care services to enable the best possible informed health decisions to achieve desired health outcomes. The engaged communication research approach recommended here is based upon the thesis presented in an important article by Cox (2007) describing how the field of environmental communication should develop as a “crisis discipline” to help solve serious challenges to environmental communication. I borrow and apply this insightful ‘crisis discipline’ phrase to describe the dire need to conduct health communication research purposefully and strategically to help improve health outcomes by refining health communication programs, policies, practices, and technologies. Ultimately, this article proposes that health communication scholars need to identify major current challenges to effective health communication, carefully study these issues, and use the relevant data collected in these studies to guide development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based interventions to help address and resolve the communication problems examined. In this way, health communication scholars can make important contributions to promoting public health and wellbeing.

Keywords

• Health communication
• crisis discipline
• engaged communication research
• transdisciplinary translational research
• evidence-based interventions

References

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