"Health Communication" (Taylor & France Online)
Health Communication is the study and practice of communicating promotional health information in order to improve health literacy and to influence personal health choices. In layman's terms, If people are more aware about their health, they can make more informed and earlier decisions which can have crucial results. It is therefore, imperative for health information to reach everyone, including those with diverse language and different linguistic comprehension in order to make sure that everyone can understand the different aspects of their health. Some of the ways that promotional health information is communicated are through public health campaigns, health education, and between doctor and patient.
(World Health Organization)
Health Communication campaigns are arguably the most utilized and effective method for spreading public health messages, especially in endorsing disease prevention and in general health promotion and wellness. There have been several historical health campaigns that have proved successful. One of these was for cardiovascular disease. In this campaign, health messages were communicated through television, radio, newspaper, cookbooks, booklets, and bus cards. Seeing ads like the one shown on the left, and learning that there was a possibility of having cardiovascular disease, caused many more men to get tested and as a result, they were able to deal with it much earlier than they would have otherwise leading to much better outcomes. Other health campaigns such as those for AIDS/HIV have also shown to have similar positive results. Similarly to the cardiovascular disease campaign, once people were made aware that there was a real possibility of having AIDS/HIV many more people got tested and as a result, they were able to handle it better.
"Making AIDS History" (Kenneth Cole)
Another thing that is being done to promote health information is incorporating it into television. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been working with Hollywood, Health, and Society to produce storylines on television that promote health information. Some of the most notable works are Contagion, and I am Legend in understanding the spread of disease, and Parenthood which deals with Asperger’s Syndrome. This strategy of implementing health information within television has proven to be successful with over half of regular prime time and daytime drama viewers reporting to have learned something about health promotion or disease prevention from a TV show and over half of African American and Hispanic viewers stating that they had either taken some form of preventative action after hearing about a health issue on TV or that a TV storyline helped them to provide vital health information to a friend or family member.
(Lumahealth.com)
A third thing that is being done to promote health literacy and the comprehension of health information is creating programs that train health providers to better communicate with their patients. This is becoming increasingly difficult as the US is becoming evermore linguistically and culturally diverse. The number of people who speak a language different than English at home has more than doubled in the last 30 years. In that time the number of non-English speakers grew by 150%. The rise in these numbers calls for effective and rapid responses on the part of healthcare systems to ensure that trained healthcare interpreters are provided at every level. Organizations such as the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) understand how some people may have limited health competency due to their language and culture and they have made an online training course that aims to raise the quality of communication between healthcare providers and their patients. This course teaches providers and their staff how to respond to a patient’s health literacy, cultural background, and language skills.
It is very important for everyone to have health literacy and to make informed, smart decisions regarding their health. In order for this to be the case, society needs to continue to implement health communication strategies such as campaigns, health education, and to train health providers to be equipped to communicate with everyone no matter their linguistic barrier. The more people that are informed, the healthier the United States gets which is something that we struggle with almost more than anyone and something that we need to be fixed.