Health Communication – serie

How and why the idea of wellness holds such rhetorical—and harmful—power.In Why Wellness Sells, Colleen Derkatch examines why the concept of wellness holds such rhetorical power in contemporary culture. Public interest in wellness is driven by two opposing philosophies of health that cycle into and amplify each other: restoration, where people use natural health products to restore themselves to prior states of wellness; and enhancement, where people strive for maximum wellness by optimizing their body's systems and functions. Why Wellness Sells tracks the tension between these two ideas of wellness across a variety of sources, including interviews, popular and social media, advertising, and online activism. Derkatch examines how wellness manifests across multiple domains, where being "well" means different things, ranging from a state of pre-illness to an empowered act of good consumer-citizenship, from physical or moral purification to sustenance and care, and from harm reduction to optimization. Along the way, Derkatch demonstrates that the idea of wellness may promise access to the good life, but it serves primarily as a strategy for coping with a devastating and overwhelming present.Drawing on scholarship in the rhetoric of health and medicine, the health and medical humanities, and related fields, Derkatch offers a nuanced account of how language, belief, behavior, experience, and persuasion collide to produce and promote wellness, one of the most compelling—and harmful—concepts that govern contemporary Western life. She explains that wellness has become so pervasive in the United States and Canada because it is an ever-moving, and thus unachievable, goal. The concept of wellness entrenches an individualist model of health as a personal responsibility, when collectivist approaches would more readily serve the health and well-being of whole populations.

Explores human dignity and care in the face of disease and disability.Complex contemporary experiences with disease, death, and disability in the United States have made the concept of human dignity seem outdated. In Doing Dignity: Ethical Praxis and the Politics of Care, Christa Teston challenges conventional notions of dignity and, based on analyses of clinical observations, interviews, and focus groups, encourages a new understanding of care.This thought-provoking book presents a practice-based approach to human dignity through three compelling case studies: US health care professionals' COVID-19 caretaking experiences, legislative debates about medical aid in dying, and clinical interactions between wheelchair users and health care professionals. Teston demonstrates how dignity is not an abstract idea but rather is a set of practices embedded in the politics and complexities of care. Drawing from feminist care ethics, rhetorical theory, disability studies, and critical Black studies, Doing Dignity offers a fresh perspective on the moral underpinnings of modern-day medicine. Teston explores how health care professionals enact dignity despite the challenges of market-based medicine, the commodification of care, and shifting societal discourse on disease, dying, and disability. This book transcends philosophical debates and provides practical insights for both patients and practitioners. Without falling into sentimentality or hopelessness, Doing Dignity honors human vulnerability while revealing how situational factors influence the practice of dignified care.

How reproductive justice birth workers and queer parents build kinships and care relations that resist oppressive structures.Anti-trans policies that restrict the boundaries of gender, reproduction, and family formation are a dangerous form of reproductive injustice with grave impacts on trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people. In Doing Gender Justice, Shui-yin Sharon Yam and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz explore the intricate intersections of gender, race, and reproductive politics to illuminate how language and care practices can be reshaped to promote transformations at the structural level and in small everyday ways. Only by enacting justice-oriented forms of reproductive care and relations, Yam and Fixmer-Oraiz contend, could activists and health care workers challenge the dominant affective and ideological investments in binary gender and its complicity in white supremacy.Set against a backdrop of relentless anti-trans legislation and attacks on bodily autonomy, this groundbreaking work shares the lived experiences and advocacy of queer and trans parents, gender-inclusive birth workers, and reproductive justice activists. Through rich storytelling and rigorous analysis of ethnographic data and cultural artifacts, the authors highlight innovative tactics that trans and nonbinary people use to dismantle oppressive systems and create a more expansive definition of family and kinship. Organized to examine how the dominant gender system influences discursive and cultural practices in multiple contexts, this book amplifies rhetorical inventions and tactics deployed by reproductive justice advocates, birth workers, and queer people who have created trans-inclusive spaces for reproduction and family-making. Doing Gender Justice offers a compelling vision for a world where all forms of family and kinship are possible and where reproductive justice can be advanced in a deeply intersectional and coalitional way.

Examines how "back-alley abortion" rhetoric shaped public memory, reproductive politics, and advocacy in the fight for abortion rights.Winner of the 2026 Outstanding Book Award by the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language & GenderHow did three words come to carry the weight of America's abortion debates? In Back-Alley Abortion, Emily Winderman examines how this phrase shaped American reproductive politics and health care standards across generations. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book traces the unexpected origins of this rhetoric in urban reform movements, showing how early associations of alleys with sanitation, morality, and criminality created lasting impressions that would later influence abortion discourse.Winderman demonstrates how "back-alley abortion" was always more than just descriptive language—it has shaped perceptions of medical legitimacy and clinical spaces. The book reveals how this phrase emerged from racialized and gendered intersections of urban planning, public health, and social reform movements before becoming a rhetoric that anticipated pre–Roe v. Wade criminalized medical encounters. After Roe, back-alley abortion molded public memory through high-profile cases and later became a weaponized tool of anti-abortion activists to restrict access under the guise of sanitary clinical care.From nineteenth-century urban reformers to contemporary Supreme Court decisions, this study illuminates how three words came to carry the weight of America's most contentious health care debate. In our post-Dobbs era, as states grapple with new restrictions on reproductive rights, understanding the complex history and rhetorical power of "back-alley abortion" has never been more crucial. Drawing on rhetorical theory, reproductive justice theory, and the history of medicine, Back-Alley Abortion offers vital insights into how rhetoric shapes our understanding of medical legitimacy, clinical standards, and health care justice in the United States.

A new perspective on humanitarian communication that recognizes refugees as partners in designing care, trust, and resilience.Humanitarian work is often measured in supplies delivered, policies enacted, or crises averted. Yet some of its most meaningful work happens through everyday acts of communication. In Humanitarian Health Communication, Gabriel L. Aguilar offers a new way to understand humanitarian practice along the Mexico–US border.Based on years of volunteer experience with organizations including Humane Borders and Casa Alitas, Aguilar argues that refugees are not simply recipients of aid but active collaborators who shape how humanitarian organizations communicate, adapt, and serve their communities. Introducing the innovative "document-interface" heuristic, he examines everything from water stations and migrant warning posters to digital technologies, maps, and public narratives to show how communication design emerges through ongoing exchanges between refugees and humanitarians. The result is a richer understanding of how trust is built, resources are distributed, and care is sustained even under extraordinary political and logistical pressures.Humanitarian Health Communication challenges long-standing narratives of dependency while offering a more ethical and participatory model for studying humanitarian action. Timely and forward-looking, the book also considers how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, can support humanitarian work without losing sight of the human relationships at its center. Essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners, this book demonstrates that compassionate communication is one of the most powerful tools of humanitarian work.

When family members experience a diagnosis of a chronic disease (e.g., cancer) or a health crisis (e.g., postpartum depression), not only the diagnosed individuals but entire families experience immediate and long-term stress as a consequence. Families with members dealing with serious health conditions may be confronted with significant challenges posed by treatment regimes, impacts on day-to-day activities, disruption of family roles, the threat of possible death, and a host of psychosocial challenges. This book is about families facing these challenges, uncertain about what to do, how to help, or how the condition will affect their daily life. Providing a coherent discussion of original research that examines communication patterns and processes involved in the day-to-day management of health conditions, this book lays bare the raw emotional experiences of families communicating with one another amid uncertainty and, for some, in the face of death.

Inspired by recent work in positive psychology, Positive Communication in Health and Wellness gives scholarly attention to what’s going right in people’s communication lives. The book harnesses a dispersed – but powerful – body of communication scholarship that has at its center a focus on building healthy communication contexts and generating wellness. By organizing and representing contemporary communication scholarship in the area of positive communication in health and wellness, the essays in this book will inspire collective action and further scholarship that highlights the potential for flourishing health, enhanced well-being, and greater human fulfillment through positive communication. This book will be useful in health communication courses as well as those in relational and organizational communication.

The study of health information seeking has become increasingly important in recent years due to the growing emphasis on the consumer/client relationship in the health arena. This trend implies a shift away from the development of health campaigns with one unitary message to a recognition that alternatives must be provided and options discussed. Indeed, health agencies are adopting the role of information-seeking facilitators through the creation of telephone services and sophisticated databases.A greater understanding of the public’s needs, especially why people seek information, may help us to accomplish the many behavioral changes that will lead toward decreases in morbidity and mortality and a more balanced approach to wellness and prevention. This is especially important in the context of the revolution in access to information brought about by the many recent advances in databases and telecommunication systems, perhaps best represented by the advent of the Internet.This book provides a comprehensive treatment of these issues appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, practitioners, and researchers.

The study of health information seeking has become increasingly important in recent years due to the growing emphasis on the consumer/client relationship in the health arena. This trend implies a shift away from the development of health campaigns with one unitary message to a recognition that alternatives must be provided and options discussed. Indeed, health agencies are adopting the role of information-seeking facilitators through the creation of telephone services and sophisticated databases.A greater understanding of the public’s needs, especially why people seek information, may help us to accomplish the many behavioral changes that will lead toward decreases in morbidity and mortality and a more balanced approach to wellness and prevention. This is especially important in the context of the revolution in access to information brought about by the many recent advances in databases and telecommunication systems, perhaps best represented by the advent of the Internet.This book provides a comprehensive treatment of these issues appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, practitioners, and researchers.

Promotion of healthy behaviors and prevention of disease are inextricably linked to cultural understandings of health and well-being. Health communication scholarship and practice can substantially and strategically contribute to people living safer, healthier, and happier lives. This book represents a concrete step in that direction by establishing a strategic framework for guiding global and local health practices.Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the volume includes state-of-the-art theories that can be applied to health communication interventions and practical guidelines about how to design, implement, and evaluate effective health communication interventions. Few books have synthesized such a broad range of theories and strategies of health communication that are applicable globally, and also provided clear advice about how to apply such strategies. This volume combines academic research and field experience, guided by past and future research agendas and on-the-ground implementation opportunities.

Promotion of healthy behaviors and prevention of disease are inextricably linked to cultural understandings of health and well-being. Health communication scholarship and practice can substantially and strategically contribute to people living safer, healthier, and happier lives. This book represents a concrete step in that direction by establishing a strategic framework for guiding global and local health practices.Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the volume includes state-of-the-art theories that can be applied to health communication interventions and practical guidelines about how to design, implement, and evaluate effective health communication interventions. Few books have synthesized such a broad range of theories and strategies of health communication that are applicable globally, and also provided clear advice about how to apply such strategies. This volume combines academic research and field experience, guided by past and future research agendas and on-the-ground implementation opportunities.

Over the last five decades, the gap between the haves and have-nots has consistently increased in the realm of access to healthcare services among different sectors of society: from quality of healthcare services, access to health supplies, technologies, and usage of health information and health prevention services, to vulnerability to certain types of diseases and health outcomes. Against this backdrop this edited collection – the first of its kind – uses the framework of communication in order to understand the underlying dimensions of health disparities and the communicative processes, policies, methodologies, and messages that are deployed with the goal of increasing access, improving quality, and addressing the underlying causes.

Over the last five decades, the gap between the haves and have-nots has consistently increased in the realm of access to healthcare services among different sectors of society: from quality of healthcare services, access to health supplies, technologies, and usage of health information and health prevention services, to vulnerability to certain types of diseases and health outcomes. Against this backdrop this edited collection – the first of its kind – uses the framework of communication in order to understand the underlying dimensions of health disparities and the communicative processes, policies, methodologies, and messages that are deployed with the goal of increasing access, improving quality, and addressing the underlying causes.

There is a significant amount of research that substantiates the connection between social support/relationships and the development, onset, and/or recovery of several physical diseases/illnesses. Research has shown, for example, that an unhappy marriage can increase the likelihood of becoming ill by 35% while stressful communication can lead to an increase in cardiovascular reactivity which in turn increases the risk of coronary heart disease and premature mortality. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the influences of communication on physiology and physical health status occurring in a variety of contexts, from families, interpersonal relationships, and public speaking to sport fandom, affection, fear, and the escalation of conflict. It offers a broad and up-to-date review of the relevant literature in this area of study.

This book is the Winner of the OSCLG Outstanding Book AwardThe loss of a desired pregnancy or the inability to experience pregnancy are intensely personal phenomena; these losses are also, in our culture at least, extremely private. Communicating Pregnancy Loss is a collection of first-person narratives about the experience of pregnancy loss. Although there is no shortage of books that help prospective parents cope with an unintended pregnancy loss or ‘survive’ infertility, most of these books are authored by physicians or therapists and address pregnancy loss through the language of guidance. This book is different. It is the first of its kind because the contributors (primarily communication scholars but also healthcare personnel and other scholars from the social sciences) tell their story of loss in their own words, offering a diverse collection of narratives that span experience and identity. The authors employ various feminist theories, narrative theories, and performance theories as well as other well-known communication theories and concepts. The book’s narrative approach to writing about and thereby understanding pregnancy loss offers readers a method for changing the way pregnancy loss is understood personally, culturally, and politically.

This book is the Winner of the OSCLG Outstanding Book AwardThe loss of a desired pregnancy or the inability to experience pregnancy are intensely personal phenomena; these losses are also, in our culture at least, extremely private. Communicating Pregnancy Loss is a collection of first-person narratives about the experience of pregnancy loss. Although there is no shortage of books that help prospective parents cope with an unintended pregnancy loss or ‘survive’ infertility, most of these books are authored by physicians or therapists and address pregnancy loss through the language of guidance. This book is different. It is the first of its kind because the contributors (primarily communication scholars but also healthcare personnel and other scholars from the social sciences) tell their story of loss in their own words, offering a diverse collection of narratives that span experience and identity. The authors employ various feminist theories, narrative theories, and performance theories as well as other well-known communication theories and concepts. The book’s narrative approach to writing about and thereby understanding pregnancy loss offers readers a method for changing the way pregnancy loss is understood personally, culturally, and politically.

There is growing emphasis in Health Communication on the study of communication processes that aim to change systems, policies, beliefs, attitudes, and/or behaviors for the betterment of the health of individuals and communities. Engagement on behalf of individual and community health is the basis of health advocacy - the attempted effort to change health policies so that better health outcomes may result.This book explores the processes and strategies involved in creating a health advocacy campaign to guide current and aspiring health advocates to successfully advocate for policy change.The Health Communication Advocacy Model is provided as a framework for exploring these issues. The model emphasizes the message design process, particularly in the tailoring of messages to address the needs of target audiences. However, consideration of important health advocacy concepts also is provided, including how to organize an advocacy team, approaches to formative research, research-based strategies for crafting effective health advocacy messages, and recommendations for what to do when an advocacy campaign is ending. This framework is designed for users to execute an advocacy effort for any health issue – from obesity, to cancer and smoking - in an efficient and effective manner.Ultimately, readers will learn how to lead a successful advocacy campaign and accomplish their desired advocacy goals.

With drug information rapidly migrating to the Web, the chronically poor standards of drug information available to consumers in the developed and the developing world are being further compromised. This book offers insight into the uncharted waters of prescription drug information and promotion on the internet and suggests how it might be transformed into an unprecedented agent for good. It traces the social and political history of prescription drug information and marketing to Western consumers, offers a social and communicative profile of prescription drug Web sites, and evaluates the most widely used sources of prescription drug information, from government organizations and information companies and TV-related sites, to health service provider sites, manufacturers’ brand sites, and social media, including YouTube and Wikipedia. The focus throughout is on practical outcomes: How can information for consumer decision making be optimized and how can consumers use it responsibly?

With drug information rapidly migrating to the Web, the chronically poor standards of drug information available to consumers in the developed and the developing world are being further compromised. This book offers insight into the uncharted waters of prescription drug information and promotion on the internet and suggests how it might be transformed into an unprecedented agent for good. It traces the social and political history of prescription drug information and marketing to Western consumers, offers a social and communicative profile of prescription drug Web sites, and evaluates the most widely used sources of prescription drug information, from government organizations and information companies and TV-related sites, to health service provider sites, manufacturers’ brand sites, and social media, including YouTube and Wikipedia. The focus throughout is on practical outcomes: How can information for consumer decision making be optimized and how can consumers use it responsibly?

This volume presents state-of-the-art reporting on how to measure many of the key variables in health communication. While the focus is on quantitative measures, the editors argue that these measures are centrally important to the study of health communication. The chapters emphasize constructs, scales, and up-to-date reports and evidence about key social science constructs and ways of measuring them, whether your interest is in patient-provider dyadic communication, uncertainty management, self-efficacy, disclosure, social norms, social support, risk perception, health care team performance, message design and effects, health and numerical literacy, communication satisfaction, social influence and persuasion, stigma, health campaigns, reactance, or other topics. Students, researchers, and policymakers will find this book an accessible resource for planning and reviewing research studies and proposals.

This volume presents state-of-the-art reporting on how to measure many of the key variables in health communication. While the focus is on quantitative measures, the editors argue that these measures are centrally important to the study of health communication. The chapters emphasize constructs, scales, and up-to-date reports and evidence about key social science constructs and ways of measuring them, whether your interest is in patient-provider dyadic communication, uncertainty management, self-efficacy, disclosure, social norms, social support, risk perception, health care team performance, message design and effects, health and numerical literacy, communication satisfaction, social influence and persuasion, stigma, health campaigns, reactance, or other topics. Students, researchers, and policymakers will find this book an accessible resource for planning and reviewing research studies and proposals.

Patienthood and Communication is an engagingly personal narrative detailing the author’s experience living with, and adapting to, a degenerative and incurable eye disease (MacTel). Beyond the personal, this poignant story more broadly illustrates the ways in which communication enables individuals to adjust to serious health threats. Author and subject Peter Kellett highlights his important interactions with health care providers, family members, friends, colleagues, students, and others that provide shape to his journey. Kellett displays a compelling capacity for self-reflection in his descriptions of the life changes his vision loss imposes upon him, among them changes to his identity, in relationships and life plans. Adaptation and flexibility reveal themselves as central tenets of his learning to become a self-empowered patient. Perhaps the most crucial element to his adjustment is, however, positive communication, which is depicted throughout the book as the driving force in Kellett’s journey into patienthood.

Patienthood and Communication is an engagingly personal narrative detailing the author’s experience living with, and adapting to, a degenerative and incurable eye disease (MacTel). Beyond the personal, this poignant story more broadly illustrates the ways in which communication enables individuals to adjust to serious health threats. Author and subject Peter Kellett highlights his important interactions with health care providers, family members, friends, colleagues, students, and others that provide shape to his journey. Kellett displays a compelling capacity for self-reflection in his descriptions of the life changes his vision loss imposes upon him, among them changes to his identity, in relationships and life plans. Adaptation and flexibility reveal themselves as central tenets of his learning to become a self-empowered patient. Perhaps the most crucial element to his adjustment is, however, positive communication, which is depicted throughout the book as the driving force in Kellett’s journey into patienthood.

Imagined interactions (IIs) can be used as a type of self-therapy when dealing with stress and trauma. We often have IIs in terms of flashbacks as portrayed in movies. It is hoped that this volume will inspire some people to use IIs as a type of self-therapy and to realize that having IIs in everyday life is a normal part of daydreaming and mental imagery. IIs can be used productively as well as dysfunctionally. Hence, it is up to the individual to decide how they use IIs to deal with stress and trauma. Benefits of IIs include helping people rehearse strategies, reduce primary tension (which occurs before or at the beginning of interactions), and gain others’ viewpoints. Even though, you can think positively or negatively, thinking positively may be easier said than done. Human survival and mental health require a balance between optimism and pessimism. Individuals gain more self-understanding by thinking about interactions. It is a process called self-perception that clarifies feelings about people and topics. IIs can improve mood by reducing tensions through the catharsis function. They help us understand our beliefs. The book is divided into three sections. Section 1 discusses how IIs can deal with teasing, bullying, abuse, and conflict. Section 2 covers physical, emotional, and material loss. Section 3 is concerned with policy concerns including hurricane evacuations, environmental concerns, police encounters, and presidential politics.

Imagined interactions (IIs) can be used as a type of self-therapy when dealing with stress and trauma. We often have IIs in terms of flashbacks as portrayed in movies. It is hoped that this volume will inspire some people to use IIs as a type of self-therapy and to realize that having IIs in everyday life is a normal part of daydreaming and mental imagery. IIs can be used productively as well as dysfunctionally. Hence, it is up to the individual to decide how they use IIs to deal with stress and trauma. Benefits of IIs include helping people rehearse strategies, reduce primary tension (which occurs before or at the beginning of interactions), and gain others’ viewpoints. Even though, you can think positively or negatively, thinking positively may be easier said than done. Human survival and mental health require a balance between optimism and pessimism. Individuals gain more self-understanding by thinking about interactions. It is a process called self-perception that clarifies feelings about people and topics. IIs can improve mood by reducing tensions through the catharsis function. They help us understand our beliefs. The book is divided into three sections. Section 1 discusses how IIs can deal with teasing, bullying, abuse, and conflict. Section 2 covers physical, emotional, and material loss. Section 3 is concerned with policy concerns including hurricane evacuations, environmental concerns, police encounters, and presidential politics.

Intercultural Health Communication brings together the fields of health and intercultural research in new work from leading communication scholars. This book is based on two premises: neither health nor culture is a neutral concept. The authors of this collection employ critical, qualitative, and interpretive research methodologies in order to engage the political and intersectional nature of health and culture simultaneously. Changing notions of healthy behaviors (or ill health) are not just a matter of knowledge; they live inside discourses about the body, aesthetics, science, and the world. We see this book as an important step towards developing a more transnational view of health communication. Intercultural Health Communication ties together the critical public health with critical intercultural communication. Through these connections, the authors engage the health research in, amongst others: HIV, cancer, trauma, celiac disease, radioactive pollution, food politics, and prenatal care. Intercultural Health Communication emerges from a broad need to address connections and challenges to incorporating health communication with intercultural communication approaches. After compiling this book, we see ready connections to public health, global studies, gender and sexuality studies and ethnic studies. In this day and age, nation states have to be considered within the broader frameworks of globalization, transnationalism and global health. We recognize that the contemporary health issues require an understanding of culture as integral towards eliminating health disparities.

Intercultural Health Communication brings together the fields of health and intercultural research in new work from leading communication scholars. This book is based on two premises: neither health nor culture is a neutral concept. The authors of this collection employ critical, qualitative, and interpretive research methodologies in order to engage the political and intersectional nature of health and culture simultaneously. Changing notions of healthy behaviors (or ill health) are not just a matter of knowledge; they live inside discourses about the body, aesthetics, science, and the world. We see this book as an important step towards developing a more transnational view of health communication. Intercultural Health Communication ties together the critical public health with critical intercultural communication. Through these connections, the authors engage the health research in, amongst others: HIV, cancer, trauma, celiac disease, radioactive pollution, food politics, and prenatal care. Intercultural Health Communication emerges from a broad need to address connections and challenges to incorporating health communication with intercultural communication approaches. After compiling this book, we see ready connections to public health, global studies, gender and sexuality studies and ethnic studies. In this day and age, nation states have to be considered within the broader frameworks of globalization, transnationalism and global health. We recognize that the contemporary health issues require an understanding of culture as integral towards eliminating health disparities.

One of the main causes for the hopelessness that drives some to thoughts of suicide is meaninglessness. This work invites the reader to create a life full of meaning by attending to words. The emphasis here is on the power of the word. When we shift into a different relationship with words, we begin to shift as well.Viktor E. Frankl created a theory of logotherapy by breathing new life into the thoughts of the ancient Stoics. At the center of that ancient philosophy was the logos or the word and everything behind the word. Bringing an emphasis of logostherapy (attending to the word) to Frankl’s theory of logotherapy (a psychology with an emphasis on meaning) brings something new to Frankl’s work. According to the author’s reading of Frankl, inspiring others to create from his work was always his intention.

One of the main causes for the hopelessness that drives some to thoughts of suicide is meaninglessness. This work invites the reader to create a life full of meaning by attending to words. The emphasis here is on the power of the word. When we shift into a different relationship with words, we begin to shift as well.Viktor E. Frankl created a theory of logotherapy by breathing new life into the thoughts of the ancient Stoics. At the center of that ancient philosophy was the logos or the word and everything behind the word. Bringing an emphasis of logostherapy (attending to the word) to Frankl’s theory of logotherapy (a psychology with an emphasis on meaning) brings something new to Frankl’s work. According to the author’s reading of Frankl, inspiring others to create from his work was always his intention.