Abstract SS02-01: How Health Communications Turned Cardiovascular Prevention into a Reality
Authors: Sparks Lisa 
Published: May 2012

SS02-01

Health communication involves creating shared meaning about health care and conditions. The crucial role of effective communication in medical care, disease prevention, health promotion and education, and all other efforts to improve health has gained increasing recognition in recent years since the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB) was created as a part of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Another mark of this new prominence is the inclusion of health communication as a focus area in Healthy People 2010. The 2006 Prevention Report: Making Better Health Communication a Reality: A Midcourse Check on the Healthy People 2010 Objectives http://odphp.osophs.dhhs.gov/pubs/revrpt states that the major objectives in this rapidly developing field cross disciplinary boundaries in research, teaching, training, and practice like never before. Such objectives cover a range of topics including the impact of technologies and health information, health literacy, and interpersonal skills. All promote better health by making accurate, appropriate, and effective health information more available, accessible, and useful to consumers.

Health communication has achieved success in areas surrounding cardiovascular prevention (e.g., Minnesota Heart Study) that are in recent years moving into the direction of cancer prevention. It took nearly three decades for the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to not only place hypertension on the national agenda but also to educate Americans about high blood pressure, embedded salt in the American diet, and subsequently choose ideal evidence based health communication strategies and interventions (see e.g., Ratzan, 2007). In particular, the NIH/NCI Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communication Science (CECCRs) initiative funded the second round for four major centers of excellence that are developing systematic evidence based health communication research programs for cancer prevention in an effort to reduce the nation’s cancer burden (U Michigan, U Wisconsin, U Penn, & St. Louis U). One of the priorities in NCI’s Strategic Plan for Leading the Nation is to integrate social, psychological, and communication research with biological research. The CECCRs are dedicated to reducing the cancer burden in the United States through increasing the reach, effectiveness, and efficiency of communication pertinent to cancer prevention, decision-making, in diagnosis and treatment, and the quality of life for survivors. Foci include subtracting health behaviors from one’s lifestyle such as smoking, and adding health behaviors to one’s lifestyle such as fruit and vegetables as well as informed decision making where no particular behavioral direction is advised such as a decision to undergo tamoxifen prophylaxis for breast cancer prevention using either raloxifen or tamoxifen http://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/hcirb/ceccr/pdfs/CECCRmidcourseupdate.pdf

Health literacy is an emerging and extremely important area of health communication around the world, and is rapidly becoming an important health communication issue receiving national and international attention. Health literacy is an important construct for understanding patients’ needs for health information, as well as their abilities to access and utilize such health information and messages for critical health decision-making. Health literacy includes the concepts of accessing and understanding information and services, with a comprehensive skill set of literacy that potentially includes visual (graphs and charts), computer (operate and search), information (obtain and apply relevant information), and numeracy (calculate and reason numerically) skills required to make appropriate health decisions. Health literacy and health communication messages go hand in hand as an important part of the prevention puzzle from cardiovascular to cancer prevention.

These initiatives support the emerging idea that interdisciplinary approaches to cancer prevention can greatly reduce the nation’s cancer burden. We must begin to broaden our view of prevention to include such important components if we are to truly make a difference in people’s lives. Clearly, those of us in health communication realize the long term investments necessary to impact public health and in particular, cancer prevention. It is truly up to all of us to begin the discourse and dialogue with the ultimate health of the public in mind. Our work can change lives in dramatic ways from the biological and medical side to the complementary social and behavioral side. It is only through research and evaluation will the quality of health communication activities improve and knowledge of effective practices increase.

Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2008;1(7 Suppl):SS02-01.