Читать книгу Health Communication Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 13

Teresa L. Thompson and James D. Robinson

Health problems are prevalent all over the world, and communication processes play essential roles in addressing these health problems. From Ebola, MERS, Zika, and COVID‐19 to vaping and the opioid epidemic, various health crises must be confronted across the world on a constant basis. The area of study that has come to be called “health communication” is crucial as practitioners and scholars attempt to alleviate and minimize a multitude of health problems and improve health care delivery. Effective and useful health communication is foundational as we attempt to control the spread of disease and health problems.

Do message strategies that encourage people to manage their diet to control diabetes also inspire them to look more closely at vaccination decisions? In other words, can we generalize what we learn about health communication regarding one health problem to other health issues? Does the study of patient‐centered communication have implications for mental health as well as physical health and illness? Does message targeting or tailoring allow the effective adaptation of anti‐vaping messages to different audiences? These and other questions are conceptual and theoretical concerns that underlie health promotion and a broader understanding of health communication processes. Through health communication research one may understand not only how communication operates in relation to a particular health issue, but how health communication functions more broadly. Indeed, the ultimate hope is an increased understanding of communication processes across contexts and a healthier world.

As is evident in the title of this volume, the focus of this book is on the theories that we use to study health‐related processes. Our goal is to help students, scholars, and practitioners more adequately examine health communication concerns by grounding their work in solid theory. We thus begin the volume by briefly defining health communication, health, health care delivery, and theory. We then talk about why theory is important in the study of health communication. We follow this with brief discussions of the traditions of health communication theory and generative tensions in health communication scholarship. This chapter concludes with a preview of the remainder of the book and a discussion of ethical concerns.