Dossier: Communication in Health Institutions and Health in Communication

2024-07-17

Health communication is an interdisciplinary field that addresses the flow of health-related information and messages between different interlocutors in society. A broad-based topic, it has attracted particular attention since the COVID-19 pandemic, when a new virus and the disease it caused radically changed social, economic, and political dynamics around the world. 

This dossier provides an opportunity for reflections on health communication by research institutions from the area and by government health institutions, as well as discussions on how health-related issues are addressed in social communication, understood here as print, broadcast, and online media. 

In particular, we are interested in contributions that scrutinize the communication methods employed not only by public and private health research institutions, but also by hospitals, universities, and other entities, while also reflecting on what is being done and what could be done in the field. This includes practices involving different health actors, as well as health communication itself in dialogue with print, broadcast, and online media. 

The general perception is that there are few studies in Brazil that problematize how health is communicated to the public. The communicators working in this area can be understood as mediators between health institutions and the public, with their own understandings of the meanings of health influencing how they prepare and divulge communication products. 

In light of the above, the aim of this dossier is to gather scientific evidence on the interfaces between health and communication in social practices, and thereby to ascertain what concrete responses the concepts and theories of communication and health can provide to the challenges and opportunities of health communication in everyday reality. 

Priority will be given to papers that address the following topics, particularly in terms of the relationship between communication, health, and institutions: 

  • Health communication on social media by research institutions  
  • Health communication by government bodies working in health 
  • Combating health misinformation in institutions, government bodies, and the private sector  
  • Contemporary journalistic coverage of health in the media 
  • Health communication on social media by influencers in the area 
  • Public perceptions of health issues and institutions since the pandemic 
  • How health is addressed by public and private communication entities  
  • Results of health information and marketing campaigns geared towards specific population groups  
  • New approaches to the management of health communication  
  • Experiments related to health in the media and health communication 

 

Guest editors: Sabine Righetti (Universidade Estadual de Campinas - Unicamp) e Mariella de Oliveira-Costa (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz - Fiocruz/Brasília).  

Deadline for submissions: September 26th, 2024 

Estimated publication date: February 2025 

When making your submission, please use the category Dossier on Communication in Health Institutions and Health in Communication 

 

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VIJAYKUMAR, Santosh et al. How shades of truth and age affect responses to covid-19 (mis)information: randomized survey experiment among WhatsApp users in UK and Brazil. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Londres, v. 8, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00752-7. Disponível em: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00752-7. Acesso em: 25 jun. 2024.