Communication and Health

A critical academic debate has in recent years been growing as to the possibilities and limitations of communication interventions in the health sector.

The critique has addressed several issues: shortcomings in the understanding of health as to biomedical, but equally important a critique of the limitations in the way health communication practitioners conceive of communication, often times to instrumental and with to limited a focus on individual behaviour change, not taking the complexity of the health challenges into consideration in the communication interventions.

These debates have led to a fundamental rethinking of the theory and practice of health communication. This comes simultaneously with the proliferation of public and academic attention to public health and to the need of health communication as a central discipline in public health and consequently as a scientific field. Thus, at the heart in this debate lies the tension between theory and practice in health communication.

A seminar on this topic entitled  Communicating for Social Change – lessons learnt from public health took place in Copenhagen on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010. Read more here