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Editor’s Note:
I am pleased to report we had a very positive response to
our first e-newsletter. If you missed it, you can still
view the issue on our website
http://www.journalofhealthcommunication.com.
If you would like to receive future issues, you must REGISTER.
In addition to submission guidelines and other practical
information, our website also has full-text access to all
published editorials and abstracts archived from nine years
of publication.
In 2005, the
Journal frequency has increased to eight issues. We are
pleased to be able to publish even more valuable research
to improve health communication practices. This newsletter
presents further diffusion of such research. Please REGISTER
and feel free to forward this to your colleagues and other
health communicators.
Scott
C. Ratzan, MD, MPA
Editor,
Journal of Health Communication
Vice
President, Government Affairs, Europe
Johnson
& Johnson
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Table
of Contents
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Volume
10 Issue 3 (April-May 2005)
Prescriptions
Communication
is intended not just to enlighten and educate but
also to lead to action. These recommendations and
“next steps” are extracted from the articles
in this issue of the Journal of Health Communication.
Click
on the title to read a short summary of the article.
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Cancer
Information Needs In Rural Areas (Engleman, K.,
et. al.)
Both rural residents and their physicians are not
aware of the scope of services provided by reputable
national cancer organizations. By educating both
physicians and the public about the various reputable
national organizations, the cancer information needs
gap may be bridged.
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Related Articles
- A Staged
Model of Communication Effects: Evidence from an Entertainment-Education
Radio Soap Opera in Tanzania (Volume
5, Number 3 / July 1, 2000)
- The Determinants
and Consequences of Information Seeking Among Cancer Patients
(Volume 8, Number 6/November-December 2003) Full
text available
Volume
10 Issue 4 (June-July 2005)
Thomas Backer
has edited a special section devoted to the life and work of Everett
Rogers. The section includes an original article "Writing
with Ev-Words to Transform Science into Action" co-authored
by Backer, James Dearing, Arvind Singhal, and Thomas Valente. Additional
commentaries from Peter Clarke, Scott Ratzan and Muhiuddin Haider
pay tribute to Dr. Rogers as a friend, colleague and mentor.
Click here to read the introduction to the section
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Prescriptions
Communication
is intended not just to enlighten and educate but also to
lead to action. These recommendations and “next steps”
are extracted from the articles in this
issue of the Journal of Health Communication. Click
on the authors' name to read a short summary of the article.
-
The
Association Between Knowledge and Attitudes About Genetic
Testing for Cancer Risk in the United States (Armstrong,
K., et. al.)
Translation of genetic technology from the bench to clinical
practice is challenging. Despite the current significant
limitations of genetic testing for disease prevention, one
part of this challenge is ensuring that this technology
will eventually be used by individuals whom it will benefit.
It is potentially reassuring to discover that members of
the general public are relatively knowledgeable about the
concepts involved in predictive genetic testing and that
greater knowledge is correlated with more positive attitudes
about the benefits of testing.
- Genomics-the
perfect information-seeking research problem (Johnson, D.
et.al.)
Those with low health literacy will be increasingly influenced
by mediators (e.g., opinion leaders, advocacy groups, participants
in internet chat rooms) willing to provide guidance and
to fill the knowledge vacuum left by the absence of professional
authorities on genomics.
- Messages
from Teens on the Big Screen: Smoking, Drinking, and Drug
Use in Teen-Centered Films (Stern, S.R.)
Empirical testing of social cognitive theory is pertinent
in order to expand our knowledge of how movies impact young
people's attitudes and beliefs toward substance use. Particular
attention must be paid to aspects of media content that
facilitate learning, including perceived similarity between
viewers and models.
- HIV/AIDS
Stories on the World Wide Web and Transformation Perspective
(Mohammed, S.N. and Thombre, A.)
A transformation perspective may be of value in motivating
an individual's information search on a health topic (HIV/AIDS
in this case). An individual's self-communication regarding
the HIV/AIDS diagnosis message and its consequences sparks
contemplation, leading to taking self-control of personal
health behavior and, often, the individual communicating
his or her experiences so that others do not undergo similar
negative health experiences. We suggest that, with these
general trends in mind, a transformation perspective needs
to be taken into account in designing health communication
campaigns.
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Women
Connect! Strengthening Communications to Meet Sexual and
Reproductive Health Challenges (Pillsbury, B., and Mayer,
D.)
Women's NGOs are eager to access and use information communication
technology, but information communication technology is
not neutral. Groups should be aware that introducing new
technology into an organization causes changes that place
pressure on systems, relationships, communication and management
styles.
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Related
Articles
Book
Review
A review
of: "Arvind Singhal & Stephen Howard (Eds.). (2003). The
Children of Africa Confront AIDS" by Thomas Tufte
This book constitutes
an especially relevant and timely contribution to the ongoing HIV/AIDS
debate, where the pressuring and urgent need to face the dramatic
challenge of the African orphans calls for much stronger commitments
from all involved stakeholders. Significantly, many of the chapters
conclude with very action-oriented recommendations. In addition
to dealing with the wide-ranging set of problems linked to orphans,
the authors raise a host of other issues regarding children of Africa:
life conditions, rights issues, abuse, and prospects for the future.
Click
here to read the entire review
Coming
Soon to JHC
- Communicating
HIV and AIDS, What Works? A Report on the Impact Evaluation of
Soul City's Fourth Series (August 2005)
- Vaccination
or Immunization? How Search Terms Affect Information Retrieval
on the Internet (September 2005)
- Special NCI
Supplement Issue- The National Cancer Institute's Cancer Information
Service: A New Generation of Service and Research to the Nation
(November 2005)
News and Notes From Other Sources
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The Health Communication Partnership (HCP) has a useful website
(http://www.hcpartnership.org/index.php).
HCP, funded by USAID, links five leading institutions together
to accomplish its goal of strengthening public health in the
developing world through strategic communication programs. The
website include valuable tools such as the Health Communication
Materials Database with access to the world's most comprehensive
and rapidly growing collection of health communication materials.
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The
Science Media Centre (http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/)
is an independent venture working to promote the voices, stories
and views of the scientific community to the news media when
science is in the headlines. Their website provides free downloads
of helpful guides on topics such as Communicating Risk in a
Soundbite or Peer Review in a Nutshell.
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Apply for the Health Policy Fellowship, sponsored jointly by
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for
Health Statistics (NCHS), and AcademyHealth. This opportunity
brings visiting scholars in health services research-related
disciplines to NCHS to collaborate on studies of interest to
policymakers and the health services research community using
NCHS data systems. Applications are welcomed from doctoral students
through senior researchers/faculty. Doctoral students must have
completed course work and be at the dissertation phase of their
programs. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
Applications are accepted until January 9, 2006. More information
at http://www.academyhealth.org/fellowships/.
Upcoming Conferences
November 30, 2005
American
College of Physicians Foundation's Fourth Annual Health Communication
Conference: Practical
Solutions to the Problems of Low Health Literacy
This
conference, held the National Academy of Sciences in Washington,
D.C., is co-sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and will bring
together national leaders and stakeholders to focus on successful
operational models that have been shown to improve health outcomes
among patients with low health literacy levels and to develop action
steps and plans to overcome barriers of low health literacy. To
learn more about the conference and to register, click here: http://foundation.acponline.org/healthcom/hcc_reg.htm.
Call
For Papers
The Journal
of Health Communication is issuing a call for papers for a Special
Issue focusing on the cost-effectiveness of health communication
programs. When applied to health communication activities, cost-effectiveness
analysis allows planners and program managers to prioritize among
different communication modes and strategies and to allocate resources
in order to achieve the maximum possible effect. The objective of
this Special Issue is to highlight methodologies for measuring the
cost-effectiveness of health communication programs and activities
and to contribute to a growing evidence base by presenting case
studies in which cost-effectiveness analysis has been applied to
health communication activities. Papers should analyze the financial
and/or economic costs of health communication activities per unit
of behavior change (e.g. per new family planning adoptee, per person
who stops smoking, per person who adopts an HIV/AIDS preventive
practice as a result of the communication program), per utility-weighted
outcome (e.g. DALY, QALY), or per intermediate outcome (e.g. per
unit change in knowledge, health literacy) in a given country context
or situation. Analyses should document clearly the steps taken to
determine effectiveness, for example, using epidemiological models,
randomized control group designs, multivariate statistical controls
for exposure in the absence of randomization, pre-/post-implementation
evaluations, time series data or other suitable approaches. Papers
should be explicit about the methods and assumptions used in calculating
costs (e.g. perspective, economic versus financial costs, discounting
of costs, amortization of capital inputs, etc.). Papers should strive
to be less than 6000 words in length. The deadline for receipt of
papers is November 30, 2005.
Please send
manuscripts to:
Paul Hutchinson
Research Assistant Professor
Dept. of International Health & Development
School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine
Tulane University
1440 Canal St., Suite 2200
New Orleans, LA 70112 USA
Feedback and ideas
for content for this newsletter should be sent to Wendy Meltzer
(iphwxm@gwumc.edu)
Visit
the brand new Routledge Communication Arena at
http://www.communicationarena.com/,
an
online resource for Communication academics, students and practitioners.
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