bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Uncertainty Management Theory
Authors: Duty Kayla M. , Kerr Anna M.
Published: September 2022

This entry introduces uncertainty management theory (UMT). Uncertainty occurs across patients' healthcare interactions in the context of complex systems, diagnosis, treatment, and medical knowledge. UMT is a tool to help individuals navigate the uncertainty of the healthcare system. UMT takes a multiprocess approach for those negotiating uncertainty, including (i) seeking or avoiding information, (ii) adapting to chronic uncertainty, and (iii) seeking assistance or social support. Since its development, within the health context, UMT has been applied to HIV/AIDS, cancer, organ transplantation, Alzheimer's disease, and rare diseases. The entry concludes with the theory's limitations and future directions for research on uncertainty management.
Communication Skills in Graduate Medical Education
Authors: Duggan Ashley P. , Shaughnessy Allen F.
Published: September 2022

Communication skills in graduate medical education involve both a foundational skill set for structuring patient‐centered healthcare and an ability to reflectively integrate better communication tools and to design more productive interactions over time. Doctors learn to create and sustain therapeutic relationships with patients and families. Communication skills in medicine first require an ability for the doctor to establish a therapeutic relationship with the patient for the purpose of diagnosis and (shared) decision making to address the patient's health needs. Necessary foundational communication competencies include building rapport, asking questions to obtain information necessary to diagnose the symptoms, actively listening with empathy and openness to patient experiences, and coming to a (shared) decision about what comes next. Communication as interaction design moves beyond a checklist of measurable skills and behaviors toward the ability to deploy a wider range of tools. Interaction design moves from communication as sending and receiving information to creating, in the moment, a shared reality between patient and physician that allows both to contribute. Building tools for interaction design requires graduate medical education to consider explicit messages as well as implicit cues and reflection about communication to create mindful awareness of tools to attend to, and create, deeper communicative experiences.
Suicide: Media
Authors: Mestas Manina , Arendt Florian
Published: September 2022

There is strong evidence for the existence of the so‐called Werther effect, which describes the phenomenon that media depictions of suicide can lead to an increase in the actual number of suicides. Scholars have identified elements of suicide reporting that strengthen detrimental imitative effects, such as a sensational reporting style including detailed depictions of the suicide method. However, not all suicide reporting must necessarily translate into a rise in suicides. For example, there is evidence that exposure to news stories about individuals who successfully coped with a suicidal crisis can actually reduce suicidality, a beneficial phenomenon termed the Papageno effect. From a suicide prevention perspective, it is important that news coverage of suicide adheres to a set of guidelines of responsible reporting, aiming to reduce or, better, to eliminate harmful Werther effects and to facilitate helpful Papageno effects. This may in fact prevent suicides. In an effort to adjust to an ever‐evolving field of new media based on new media and communication technologies, continuous endeavors to evaluate the role of the media in the suicide prevention domain are of utmost importance.
Social Media: YouTube
Authors: Robey Christiana , Cohen Elizabeth
Published: September 2022

This entry presents an overview of YouTube's role in health communication. The availability, affordability, and visual format of content on the video sharing site make YouTube a popular source of public health information. YouTube influencers model both healthy and unhealthy behaviors for viewers, and viewers exchange social support for their health problems on the website. Much of the content on YouTube that features unhealthy behavior is commercial, and children may be particularly susceptible to its influence. Credible public health organizations often upload campaign videos and public service announcements on YouTube. However, because the website has few restrictions dictating what videos can be uploaded on the site, YouTube users also commonly encounter misleading or inaccurate health‐related videos. The problem of health misinformation spreading on YouTube is exacerbated by the website's algorithm that encourages viewers to “go down the rabbit hole” by recommending they watch progressively extreme and misleading content. YouTube has taken some modest steps toward improving the accuracy of the information on the site, but the success of these efforts is unknown.
Advertising: Food and Nonalcoholic Beverages
Authors: Alblas Monique C. , Boyland Emma J.
Published: September 2022

For many people, it is challenging to maintain a healthy weight in an environment that heavily promotes the (over)consumption of palatable yet often unhealthy food and beverages. Each year, billions of dollars are spent on food advertising, and the vast majority is for energy‐dense products, high in added fat, sugar, and/or salt. Even though traditional outlets (e.g., television, billboards) remain popular advertising avenues among marketers, the volume of digital advertising and the variety of ways in which it manifests (e.g., via social media, mobile apps, games) have massively increased in recent years. Research has shown clear evidence that exposure to food advertising increases preferences, purchases, and intake of promoted products. Children, in particular, appear to be vulnerable to advertising messages, at least partly due to their poor cognitive skills in recognizing its persuasive intent. Even though older children and adults demonstrate better capabilities in this regard, a diverse array of message strategies and other persuasive tactics salient to them (e.g., nutritional claims, emotional appeals, celebrity endorsement, embedded advertising) are used, meaning they are also highly susceptible to advertising effects. To combat the detrimental influences of food advertising, two general approaches have been proposed: restricting the amount and power of advertising, and reducing its impact. In a world of pervasive food advertising, in which digitalization has recently enabled marketers with a range of new opportunities to even better reach and persuade potential consumers, major regulatory actions are urgently needed to protect consumers in the battle against overweight and obesity.
Advertising: Over‐The‐Counter Drugs
Authors: Zwier Sandra
Published: September 2022

Over‐the‐counter (OTC) drugs are medicines such as cough medicine and painkillers that people can literally buy over the counter in diverse kinds of retail shops. With increasingly aging and health‐conscious populations, the advertising of these drugs is a huge industry where advertising practices are importantly shaped by the status of these drugs as “in‐between” prescription drugs and regular consumer products. A significant share of the advertisements thereby promotes the – illicit – sales of stronger drugs, especially over the Internet. Concerns typically voiced over OTC drug advertising practices are that the ads tend to contain unverified or exaggerated appeals about the drugs' positive effects, while often omitting or downplaying information about potential risks and side effects. Alternative views, however, place more emphasis on the contribution of OTC drug advertising to the containment of public health spending, and to the empowerment of citizen groups that face barriers in access to professional care.
Advertising: Prescription Drugs
Authors: Koinig Isabell , Mueller Barbara
Published: September 2022

The pharmaceutical industry is of tremendous global importance and invests heavily in promoting its products to medical practitioners and, in selected parts of the world, directly to end consumers. This practice is commonly known as direct‐to‐consumer advertising (DTCA), which is only permitted in the United States and New Zealand. The present entry reviews the practice of DTCA and outlines its historic development. DTCA is discussed from both economic and legal perspectives. Advantages and disadvantages associated with DTCA are addressed, and this form of pharmaceutical advertising is critically evaluated. Future research in this area is encouraged.
Message Design: Overview
Authors: Harrington Nancy Grant
Published: September 2022

This entry provides an overview of persuasive message design. The first section focuses on a number of important content, structure, and format characteristics of messages (message “elements”). Following that, three classes of theories that can inform message design are presented: theories of message effects, information processing, and health behavior change. Next, important methodological issues in message design research are addressed, including the importance of message pretesting, differentiating message features from message effects, and message replication. The entry concludes with directions for future research.
Narrative Appeals
Authors: Lu Amy Shirong
Published: September 2022

This entry conceptually reviews the definition, moderators, and mechanism of narrative appeals as well as relevant concepts and theories for their health persuasion and behavioral change effects. Narrative transportation (or immersion) is a mechanism through which a narrative influences people's cognition, affect, and behavior. This process promotes the suspension of disbelief as well as the reduction of counterarguments and resistance to persuasion, enables the story experience to become like a personal experience, and creates the player's affective response to narrative characters through processes such as interpersonal attraction, likability, identification, or parasocial interaction. Moderators include the audience's transportability, need for affect, prior knowledge and familiarity as well as narrative quality, co‐viewing, and first‐person perspective. Narratives complement behavioral change theories including the theory of planned behavior, social cognitive theory, and self‐determination theory. A preliminary body of research has verified narrative's behavioral change effect. Once narratives have been developed with the guidance of relevant behavior theories and engaging elements for the audience, they can induce significant behavior change such as objectively measured physical activity. The effect is not simply attributable to the inclusion of additional video, but narrative per se. The development of media technology has created many opportunities for narratives to elicit significant behavior changes. Innovative and rigorous empirical research is needed to enhance our understanding of the mechanism of narrative persuasion and behavior change.
Opinion Leaders
Authors: Carpenter Christopher J.
Published: September 2022

Opinion leaders are people who can informally influence others to adopt, among other things, healthier behaviors. This entry distinguishes between polymorphic opinion leaders, who are able to influence people on any topic, and monomorphic opinion leaders, who are usually only able to influence people on a particular topic, as well as approaches blending the two types. The need to understand the best way to identify and recruit opinion leaders is discussed in the context of employing them to promote healthy behavior changes.
Visual Communication
Authors: King Andy J.
Published: September 2022

This entry provides an overview of how visual communication is studied by health communication researchers and used by health communicators. There are a variety of ways health communication researchers study visual phenomena, using a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. Overall, the study of visual communication within health contexts is an area that continues to develop and expand as visual stimuli become increasingly prominent in popular digital and social media messages.
Transtheoretical Model (Stages of Change)
Authors: Dijkstra Arie
Published: September 2022

The transtheoretical model (TTM) is a widely used model of health behavior change (e.g., smoking cessation, eating more healthily), with roots in clinical psychology, having been developed initially to unify the scattered field of psychotherapies. In spite of its successes in enhancing our understanding of change and interventions development, it has received substantial resistance from researchers, partly because of misperceptions of the model. The aim of the present entry is to further improve our understanding of the TTM by going beyond its specific conceptualizations and operationalizations. The pros and cons and self‐efficacy in the TTM are the same as outcome and self‐efficacy expectations in social cognitive theory (SCT). This means that the TTM includes the most important psychological determinants of behavior. The processes of change are manifestations of self‐regulation. This places the TTM among contemporary goal theories, including the SCT. Its core organizing concept of stages of change in which people move through five different stages in behavior change can be seen as one application of systems theory to behavior change. In this conceptualization, humans are biological and symbolic systems whose change follows the higher‐level laws of systems theory. By understanding the TTM through these other well‐known theories, it becomes clear that it has a solid base in social cognitive theorizing. It also makes clear that the TTM's unique stage concepts, which need further development, have their foundations in systems theory, which can show how the social cognitive constructs are organized in time when behavior changes.
Customization
Authors: Bol Nadine
Published: September 2022

Digital technologies allow users to customize content such that it matches individual needs and preferences. Different from other tailoring strategies that have often been applied in health communication (i.e., data‐/system‐driven personalization), customization gives users an active role in selecting and creating personalized information environments, increasing a sense of control over their technology use. This entry describes how customization has been conceptualized and researched, as well as the theoretical approaches used to explain its expected effects. Although the concept of customization has been studied in a wide variety of related fields (e.g., information systems), the focus of this entry is how customization has been and can be applied to health communication practices.
Disaster Communication
Authors: Spradley R. Tyler
Published: September 2022

Disasters can be natural, technological, and/or human‐generated and are marked by their disruption, scale, scope, and severity. Disaster communication envelops the interpersonal, group, organizational, public, and mediated construction of predisaster, disaster, and post‐disaster messages aimed at mitigating risks, increasing capacity, mobilizing publics, enhancing individuals' self‐efficacy to avoid risk and respond, providing support, coordinating activities, managing information and uncertainty, and learning. Advances in warning systems, comprehensive models, and social media are noted. Additional attention to information access, cultural context, disaster literacy, interorganizational coordination, media, post‐disaster trauma, and support is needed.
High Reliability Organizations
Authors: Spradley R. Tyler
Published: September 2022

High reliability organizations (HROs) consistently operate relatively error‐free in high‐risk, fast‐paced, highly equivocal complex environments. Central to the enactment of high reliability is the communal versus individual nature of five heedful, or cognitive, processes, coined as collective mind. While applied broadly to organizations in high‐risk environments demanding safe collective activity, HROs and collective mind are applied more specifically to healthcare organizations and the high‐performing teams within them. Of interest is how HROs communicatively constitute safety cultures, coordinate through teamwork, learn, and navigate contradictions between tightly coupled formalized rules and hierarchies and the need for loosely coupled responses to hazards.
Chronic Diseases: CVD/Heart Disease/Stroke
Authors: Abendschein Bryan , Abendschein Dana
Published: September 2022

Chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) are pervasive and impact the lives of millions of people around the globe each year. A common type of CVD called atherosclerotic disease is a product of plaque buildup in the arteries that is often responsible for cardiovascular episodes including heart attack and stroke. Heart attack, specifically, is the result of arterial occlusion and is the number one leading cause of death in the United States. Similarly, stroke can be caused by an arterial blockage as well as a ruptured vessel in the brain, leading to cognitive and physical effects including communicative issues such as aphasia. Both conditions have the potential to impact people for years after they occur, but many of the direct causes can be addressed through adopting a healthy lifestyle.
Chronic Diseases: Diabetes
Authors: Basinger Erin D. , Morris Briana
Published: September 2022

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic and often debilitating illness, and its prevalence is rapidly increasing across the globe. Though it originates in the pancreas, diabetes affects multiple organs and systems in the body, including the kidneys, eyes, nervous system, and heart. Beyond its physical effects, diabetes is also associated with depression, social isolation, and difficulty maintaining relationships. Health communication scholars have addressed both individual and relational correlates of diabetes, including self‐care, health literacy, uncertainty, coping, the patient–clinician relationship, stigma, and social support. Importantly, not all people with diabetes have similar experiences, given the healthcare inequities that exist for racially marginalized groups, people with lower socioeconomic status, and individuals in larger bodies. Health communication scholarship should continue to investigate the diabetes experience, focusing on structural inequities, the role of the media, and health communication campaigns aimed at prevention.
Suicide
Authors: White Allie , Pfender Emily , Silk Kami
Published: September 2022

According to the World Health Organization, one person dies by suicide every 40 seconds, which totals roughly 800,000 people each year. The way in which people discuss suicide interpersonally has direct effects on health outcomes and intervention efforts, thus inviting further scholarly investigation of these mechanisms and outcomes. Using communication theory to guide these investigations, health communication researchers predominantly study suicide by examining the media effects of news coverage of suicide and its implications of suicide contagion, the impact of communication campaigns for promoting help seeking for suicide prevention, and the role of social support in building resilience to protect against suicidal behavior. The implications of their studies generate information to guide international campaigns inspiring social support for those in mental distress, create guidelines for responsible media reporting of suicide stories, and provide sense‐making for family and friends impacted by the consequences of suicidal actions.
Food Insecurity
Authors: de Souza Rebecca
Published: September 2022

This entry provides an introduction to food insecurity and how it has been studied in the field of health communication. The research falls into four primary categories: identity, food policy, organizing for social change, and culture‐centered approaches. Using social scientific, critical‐cultural, and rhetorical perspectives, health communication research emphasizes the communicative linkages surrounding hunger and food insecurity. A cross‐cutting assumption of this work is that discourse and materiality are inextricably linked; in other words, how we
communicate
about hunger and food insecurity influences our health, identity, environments, and policies to address hunger.
Health Disparities: Indigenous: Native American
Authors: Cordes Ashley
Published: September 2022

This entry offers an overview of Indigenous/Native American (sometimes referred to as American Indian/Alaska Native) health disparities and their ramifications through a communication lens. First is an elaboration of how Indigenous peoples experience disproportionate disease and lower life expectancy than other Americans. This is connected to colonialism and the unique status that Indigenous nations and urban Indigenous peoples hold in what is now the United States. Then the entry details systemic issues between settler entities and Indigenous communities that foment disparities in physical and mental health and access to care. Communication scholars have noted how colonially imposed poverty, digital divides, medical statistical misinformation, and culturally ineffective health messaging contribute to the problem. While disparities can be devastating, Indigenous peoples are actively engaged in reformation processes to demand change and contribute to a vision of health equity.
Rural Health
Authors: Jamil Raihan , Dutta Uttaran
Published: September 2022

Rural health goes beyond any visualization of scenic landscapes and deals with multiple aspects of health and wellness. Although there are no universally accepted definitions for “rural health,” the term generally refers to locality (urban vs. non‐urban), population density (number of people per square km of land), and structural marginalization (availability and access to health resources). Health scenarios of rural underserved spaces, especially in the Global South, are vulnerable and at significant risk as the marginalized populations are constantly negotiating with structural issues, large‐scale health disparities, and situated adversities. By legitimizing local voices and agencies, community‐based and local‐centric approaches potentially help the rural marginalized populations in reclaiming dignity, health, and well‐being.
Stigma Management
Authors: Meisenbach Rebecca J. , Roscoe Rikki A.
Published: September 2022

Stigma management describes how individuals and organizations respond to, resist, and (re)construct the enactment of stigma. It is a communicative process that is highly relevant to the study and practice of health communication. Scholars primarily use modified labeling theory and stigma management communication theory to understand, critique, and transform the experience and management of stigma. Increasingly, health communication scholars are also attending to issues of intersectionality, power, organizational structures, materiality, multiple strategies, and allyship in stigma management communication research and practice.
Community Health Workers
Authors: Jamil Raihan
Published: September 2022

This entry highlights the concept of community health workers (CHW) as part of a broader health communication discipline. Starting with the foundational concept of community health, the entry moves on to discuss specifically who CHW are, and the impact they have on community members' lives. Communities are defined as spaces where people live and interact, and where actions/inactions of members impact the lives of others in the same community. The people who bridge the gap between healthcare policies targeted toward communities and the community members themselves are the community health workers. The entry goes on to discuss qualifications needed to become a CHW and salary expectations for such work.
Military Veteran Health and Reintegration
Authors: Howe William T.
Published: September 2022

The past years have seen a proliferation of research about the health and reintegration experiences of military veterans. Many researchers have approached these issues from psychological or sociological perspectives, but studies from the field of communication are noticeably lacking. This entry first contextualizes the issues of culture, identity, and morality to military service before exploring recent communication scholarship in these areas. In the concluding paragraphs the entry suggests opportunities for future research from a communication perspective. Numerous reports, public awareness campaigns, and academic research articles document negative health risks (e.g., alcoholism, depression, anxiety, post‐traumatic stress) as well as self‐destructive behaviors (e.g., suicide, risk‐taking, binge drinking) associated with serving in the military. Most academic research has focused primarily on veterans who have served in combat roles, but not all veterans who have issues reintegrating have served in combat. Few studies have gone beyond describing these issues and sought to uncover communication events associated with these risky health behaviors. The purpose of this entry is to focus on communication mechanisms which may lead to military veteran health issues, examining military veteran health and reintegration in a broad sense.
Nongovernmental (and International Nongovernmental) Organizations (
NGOs
/
INGOs
)
Authors: Acharya Lalatendu
Published: September 2022

NGOs/INGOs are important stakeholders in the health, social, and economic development sector in the globe. Variously described as nonprofits or voluntary organizations, NGOs are an indispensable partner in reaching communities and working for sustainable development. NGOs are diverse and perform such a range of work that they are analytically complex and it is difficult to pin down a generic definition. Many NGOs are specialized and offer specific technical capacity and expertise in the field. The many challenges and opportunities they face in the changing world include increased scrutiny over funds utilization, developing an operational standard protocol, building technical and other capacity of their workers, coordination among themselves, balancing their roles with governments as partners in program implementation, and holding governments accountable at the same time. Private sector partnerships in health focus on building social and health infrastructure after the COVID pandemic and offer prospects for growth. NGOs provide a good opportunity for health communication scholars to conduct field research with primary and secondary data and build research capacity in health and behavior change communication.
Health Activism
Authors: Zoller Heather M.
Published: September 2022

This entry describes communication perspectives on health activism and health social movements. The entry defines and conceptualizes health activism, including different issue foci and political orientations. Communication research highlights the discursive strategies of health activists, including diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing, building identification, and selecting forms of organizing and advocacy tactics.
Violence (Gun): Social Community Movements
Authors: Winslow Luke
Published: September 2022

Gun violence is a major cause of injury and death in the United States, caused in large part by the staggering number of privately owned guns. Efforts to reduce the number of guns and the prevalence of gun violence have been limited by a polarized political climate, irrational deliberation, and legislative incompetence. However, social movements reconceptualizing gun violence as a public health crisis highlight a promising political and discursive remedy. Since the mid‐1990s, activists and organizers, university researchers, and public health professionals have sought to increase federal research funding, facilitate community and academic collaborations, and promote evidence‐based gun safety policies by conceptualizing gun violence as a contagious epidemic – not an individual or moral failing best remedied by punitive measures. Although unfinished, the empirical, social, and political benefit of reconceptualizing gun violence as a public health crisis illuminates valuable lessons for understanding how communication shapes and is shaped by health beliefs and behaviors.
Caregiving: Parent–Child
Authors: Kastrinos Amanda
Published: September 2022

Parent caregivers face numerous sources of stress in caring for their sick child. Caregiving scholarship has examined parent–child caregiving in a number of chronic and acute illness contexts, including pediatric cancer, asthma, diabetes, and developmental disabilities. Like other caregivers, parent caregivers experience a physical and psychological burden as a result of their caregiving experience. The demands of caregiving are increasingly complex and time consuming, leaving little time for parents' career, household, and personal care responsibilities. Adaptive communication is essential for parents to successfully navigate the challenges related to their child's illness, both within their family and with their child's clinicians.
Caring for Older Adults
Authors: Fox Stephanie , McAllum Kirstie , Vautrin‐Nadeau Marie‐Ève
Published: September 2022

Caring for older adults is relational, complex, and multifaceted; it implies both private and public concerns. In Western societies, it is colored by ideals of autonomy and self‐determination. However, it also can be understood through a continuum of interdependence, where an older adult's care needs vary by their cognitive and physical capacities, implying a range of care relationships and contexts of care. Contexts of formal care include clinical settings and long‐term care facilities, where care is paid and formally organized. Paid care workers, especially (im)migrant laborers, provide care to older adults in a variety of living situations, from the adult's home to residential facilities. An important source of unpaid, informal care for older adults in the community is kin caregiving, which entails changes to relationships and identities. While bringing meaning and satisfaction, it can also lead to relational conflict, caregiver burden, and burnout. Future research should explore the structural conditions of paid care work, cultural stereotyping of care workers, and culturally responsive practices of care for older adults from Indigenous or other marginalized communities. Communication scholars can also contribute to innovative art‐based interventions in caring for older adults, as well as planning for inclusive design.
End of Life and Families
Authors: Foster Elissa , Keeley Maureen P. , Kerstiens Savanna
Published: September 2022

Family communication at the end of life (EOL) is complex because it involves negotiations across intersecting systems or contexts of care, embedded relationships of family and friends, and cultural and religious meaning. Three theoretical constructs are particularly helpful when addressing this complexity – the transactional model of communication, relational dialectics theory, and family systems theory. Contexts of EOL care may include inpatient and outpatient or home‐based (residential) care, and may involve primary care, palliative medicine, and/or hospice practitioners who have specific training and goals for communicating with families. The exigencies of navigating and negotiating clinical care of a patient at EOL have given rise to specific communication practices, including the family meeting, goals of care conversations, and advance care planning. The loss of a family member also constitutes an important point of transition for families. A significant body of research by Maureen Keeley and colleagues focuses on the qualities and characteristics of final conversations (FCs) between a person who is dying and their loved ones. Because death is imbued with cultural, religious, and/or spiritual significance, approaches to EOL communication with families must also encompass awareness of and responsiveness to cultural differences in expectations and practices of caregiving.
Mental Health and Family Communication
Authors: Bagautdinova Diliara , Flood‐Grady Elizabeth
Published: September 2022

Mental illness affects millions of individuals annually. Communication in family relationships contributes significantly to other family members' experiences with mental health and illness. Eating disorders, depression, and alcohol use/misuse are well‐known mental health concerns that affect and are affected by family communication processes, such as expressed emotion and social support. Paradoxically, communication within the family is also linked to mental health and illness socialization and serves as a foundation for the prevention and treatment of mental illness.
Violence: Interpersonal (
IPV
)
Authors: Scarduzio Jennifer A.
Published: September 2022

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an important public health issue. Health communication research has explored how media portrayals, healthcare communication, and parent–child communication relate to IPV. Media portrayals of IPV tend to skew representations of risk through overemphasizing the killing of victims, underreporting drug and/or alcohol abuse of perpetrators, and presenting IPV as an individual‐level issue rather than a societal concern. Perceptions of IPV by the general public often contain stereotypes about emotion, control, and power, and these stereotypes are shaped by media portrayals. Parent–child communication about IPV impacts children's future IPV perpetration and victimization. Additionally, mothers' communication seems to play more of a role in affecting IPV involvement, especially for daughters. People who experience IPV want to communicate with their clinicians in private areas and they would prefer that the communication occur toward the middle of the interaction. On the other hand, some clinicians do not feel adequately trained to talk about IPV and they sometimes overemphasize disclosure of IPV by patients. Future research needs to continue to look at the clinician–patient interaction to include more IPV survivor voices as well as conduct more research about LGBTQ+ relationships and interpersonal violence.
Academic Organizations: Société Française des Sciences de L'Information et de la Communication
Authors: Raichvarg Daniel , Galibert Olivier
Published: September 2022

Since 1972, the French Society for Information and Communication Sciences (SFSIC) has accompanied the French community of researchers in information and communication sciences through various means and activities: its publications such as
La Revue Française des Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication
, its biannual conference, accredited Study and Research Groups, and specific surveys. It acts as an institutional framework for health communication research in a historical, epistemological, and institutional context marked by interdisciplinarity, a critical approach, and comprehensive methods. While three general lines of research are widely developed (media communication, organizational communication, and interpersonal/intercultural communication), there are two ongoing challenges. A major challenge that is underdeveloped for research in health communication in France is the flood of digital issues and the emergence of generational communication. Both trends highlight theoretical and practical questions that confront the French community of researchers in health communication: the researcher's agency in communication processes, renewed reflection on ethics and knowledge transmission, and the reorganization of an old landscape. These trends currently impact many other communication fields.
Substance Use and Prevention
Authors: Shin YoungJu , Martin Julie
Published: September 2022

This entry explains the roles of family communication, interpersonal communication, and public health interventions in the context of substance use prevention and introduces theories that guide prevention research. To delve into socialization processes for substance use prevention, communication and interaction within family and interpersonal relationships are followed by the development and dissemination of public health interventions.
Acculturation
Authors: Raisa Aantaki , Ho Evelyn Y.
Published: September 2022

Acculturation is a form of cultural transmission or adaptation from outside a person's own cultural group, resulting from direct contact (i.e., colonization, immigration) or indirect contact (i.e., media exposure, books). Originating in intercultural studies, acculturation made its mark in health through epidemiological research and in health communication through women's acculturation to a society that objectifies the female body. However, a majority of current health communication research incorporates acculturation to understand immigrant health behaviors. Due to the current trend of patient‐centered communication in healthcare, addressing and understanding a patient's identity is given utmost priority. For individuals experiencing adaptation to new cultures, acculturation provides a pathway for understanding their changing identities. The four main acculturated identities – integrated, assimilated, separated, and marginalized – can help clinicians and health communication experts develop suitable patient–clinician communication/communication‐based interventions for acculturated individuals. A lack of clear understanding of an acculturating individual's identity, on the other hand, may lead to stereotyping and further marginalizing minority population groups. Despite its importance, acculturation research lacks rigor in measurement, defining, and operationalizing culture. Moreover, implicit assumptions made in most acculturation research, such as the inherent “goodness” of acculturation or having a target culture to acculturate toward, reinforces societal power structure and pressures ethnic and cultural minorities to (most often) Westernize, instead of acculturating. Future research needs to focus on developing more rigorous scales and defining and operationalizing culture in the context of the study.
CIH(Complementary and Integrative Healthcare): Ayurveda and Yoga
Authors: Agarwal Vinita
Published: September 2022

Ayurveda's discursive organization of its knowledge claims is enacted in a postcolonial sociocultural landscape characterized by a diversity of traditional approaches and their epistemic explorations of the nature of health and healing. Health communication studies have examined clinician–patient communication, embodiment, and the therapeutic relationship in whole‐person medical systems like Ayurveda. These have been employed toward integrative approaches and seek to communicate Ayurveda's traditional knowledge principles in their ontological whole‐person health frameworks. Critiques of Ayurveda as a cultural category have explored how efforts to employ it in the construction of a geopolitical national identity are characterized by a lack of sociocultural support. Falling under the banner of critical cultural studies, these studies point to the neoliberal valorization of cultural adaptation as a response to addressing disparities in health outcomes. Situated within the ambit of Hindu philosophy, yoga is understood as shaping positive social and individual behavior to improve mind, body, and spiritual health. Health communication examinations of yoga have explored the (re)productions of the power structures that support and construct these hybrids, situating its debates of cultural appropriation, ownership, and hybridity both in national discourse and as part of its strategic ideological projection in the West.
CIH (Complementary and Integrative Healthcare): Chinese Medicine
Authors: Luk Pauline , Chang Leanne
Published: September 2022

Chinese medicine is one of the world's most ancient medical and healing practices that originated from China. It demonstrates a medical and health system that reflects the philosophy and values of Chinese culture. Chinese medicine has been marked as a branch of complementary and alternative medicine and listed as traditional medicine, oriental medicine, and Asian medicine in global medical discourse. This entry briefly discusses: (i) the concept formation and development of Chinese medicine; (ii) interpersonal communication of Chinese medicine from the perspective of physician–patient communication, interprofessional collaboration, and intergenerational communication; and (iii) information about Chinese medicine in the media.
Cultural Humility
Authors: Qi Diane , Ho Evelyn Y.
Published: September 2022

Cultural humility is a framework developed in the biomedical field to train and guide clinicians to provide equitable and high‐quality care to increasingly diverse patient populations. Cultural humility builds upon the related concept of cultural competency, which has a greater emphasis on obtaining knowledge and skill sets relevant to cross‐cultural care. Instead, cultural humility emphasizes lifelong learning and self‐reflection without a finite end point, patient‐focused interviewing, community‐based care and advocacy, and institutional humility. Since the coining of cultural humility, its application in multiple health fields and with multiple patient populations has been explored. In addition, culturally humble communication strategies have been developed. However, there is still need for further examination of the applications of cultural humility, the impact of cultural humility on clinical practice, and the development of cultural humility training curricula. In addition, cultural humility has been understudied in the field of health communication and more work is needed to examine the relationship between cultural humility and other existing health communication concepts.
Voice of Lifeworld, Voice of Medicine
Authors: Koenig Christopher J.
Published: September 2022

Sociologist and psychiatrist Elliot Mishler's monograph titled
The Discourse of Medicine: Dialectics of Medical Interviews
builds on critical theory and social phenomenology to propose that people's use of language in their everyday lives is different from the specialized languages professionals use for specialized work in various professional settings. These languages are proposed as “voices” where individuals engaged in the act of speaking as part of their everyday life and personal, subjective experience speak in the “Voice of the Lifeworld” (VOL). Similarly, individuals engaged in speaking as part of their professional life using technical medical vocabulary enact the “Voice of Medicine” (VOM). This entry outlines Mishler's theoretical proposal and then traces how the VOL and VOM have been empirically applied and theoretically expanded. The entry concludes with suggestions for future research directions.
Physical Activity/Exercise
Authors: Glowacki Elizabeth M. , Beattie Austin , Slattery Erin C. , Magsamen‐Conrad Kate
Published: September 2022

Long‐term engagement in physical activity is associated with positive health outcomes. Physical activity can take many forms and range in intensity. Multiple communication campaigns and interventions have attempted to motivate and incentivize physical activity among a variety of target audiences. Encouraging individuals to maintain an active lifestyle can be difficult due to a range of behavioral and structural factors. Health communication scholars have applied multiple theories and frameworks to enhance the persuasiveness, relevance, and appeal of messages aimed at promoting physical activity. Increased access and reduced costs have placed technological innovations like fitness apps, wearables, exergames, and chatbots at the center of these interventions. Future work in this area should consider how communication can be used to target messaging at a broader level (e.g., policy reform) and advocate for resources for underserved and understudied populations.
Prosocial Health Communication
Authors: Stehr Paula
Published: September 2022

Prosocial health communication describes communicative behavior that is intended to benefit others' health. It can be explored regarding different actors and aims. Social support as a specific type of (pro)social interaction is particularly closely related to health and illness. On an individual level, supportive communication within self‐help groups, online communities or between partners and friends can be examined in more detail. The concept of prosocial communication puts those providing support in the spotlight. This is a valuable perspective as providing social support may be more beneficial than receiving it. People affected by shared health threats often join to support each other and to improve the healthcare system. Communication plays a crucial role for health activism, both for the articulation of claims to the outside and for the creation of identity and knowledge within these communities. Online media offers specific advantages for both functions. On a strategic level, health campaigns often use prosocial appeals, i.e., they emphasize the consequences of one's behavior for the health of others. Particularly striking examples are campaigns for blood or organ donations. However, prosocial motives and the call for solidarity are also relevant for promoting behaviors such as vaccination uptake or the use of contact tracing apps during a pandemic. It can be concluded that prosocial behavior is relevant regarding different aims of health communication which are mutually interconnected.
Sleep
Authors: Robbins Rebecca , Van den Bulck Jan
Published: September 2022

Sleep plays a critical role in health across the lifespan, yet research applying the tools and techniques from health communication to promote sleep has been limited. This entry provides a primer on the importance of sleep and circadian health; summarizes the available literature on sleep in health communication; and identifies populations at high risk for sleep issues and potential health communication strategies to combat these barriers. We conclude with a call for more attention to sleep in the field of health communication, for the tools and techniques offer tremendous opportunities for extending and refining our knowledge of health communication principles and practice.
Emergency Preparedness Communication
Authors: Ranjit Yerina S. , Houston J. Brian
Published: September 2022

This entry provides an overview of emergency preparedness communication, its conceptual explication, relevant theories and research, and future directions of this field. Emergency preparedness communication refers to individuals' ability to prevent, and reduce harm before, during, and after, natural or human‐caused emergency events. Although emergencies are not always preventable, being prepared can reduce the impact on individuals and the community. Related to risk and crisis communication, emergency preparedness communication is complex and multidisciplinary with academic roots in emergency management, public health, communication, and social psychology. In communication, persuasion theories and the communication ecology model offer useful theoretical frameworks to understand the key determinants of emergency preparedness.
Health Information Seeking
Authors: Yang Qinghua , Van Stee Stephanie K.
Published: September 2022

Health information seeking behavior (HISB), as an active effort to obtain specific health information beyond routine or customary exposure to information sources, has a significant influence on individuals' health behaviors and outcomes. In this entry, we provide a brief summary of HISB, along with its positive and negative outcomes of HISB. We further explain the key sociopsychological antecedents predicting HISB based on the three most well‐known and widely applied theoretical frameworks (i.e., comprehensive model of information seeking, risk information seeking and processing model, planned risk information seeking model). This entry also discusses the implications of health information seeking in everyday life from the perspectives of health literacy and information overload and provides suggestions to make informed health decisions.