Monday, November 9, 2009

Health Communication

Definitional

Human communication is categorized into five main categories: doctor-patient, parent-child, therapy, media (ads) and communication displayed on signs or logs. The purpose of studying health communication is to educate people how to be more effective when coping with diseases or other health related problems. If successful this would eventually save lives as well as improve the health of the general population. Because it is not the most obvious type of communication it is often referred to as a sub disciple of communication because it incorporates several types of communication that can be portrayed through various mediums. More specifically the things that contribute to health promotion and disease prevention are: doctor-patient, the individuals search for information, the individuals response to clinical diagnosis, public health campaigns, dissemination of health issues, visual images of health and the health care providers giving information. If these various promotions and preventions in health communication are successful, health communication is able to raise awareness to risks of diseases and solutions to those risks. Through the use of professional skills, prevention strategies and future implications, it may be possible to not only prevent the spread of various diseases but also help find cures to treat the people who are already infected. To allow ourselves to better understand these health concerns there are three models which have been developed: the planned behavior model which is born out of persuasion and portrays how we can think of behaviors, the health belief model which portrays how our behavior is completely depend on our vulnerability and lastly the stages of change model which deals with how we can specifically deal with a problem that has put us in a situation concerning our health.

Application

For my application blog I have chosen to use As The Band Played On as my model for health communication. One of the major things that appears in the movie is the mass media and the role that it plays in altering the general population’s opinion of the disease. Throughout the movie several clips from news stories are shown and are often blown out of proportion. The media felt that in order to portray the true danger of the disease they must make the story more interesting/appealing to the viewer. For example, in the beginning of the movie it was shown that AIDS was mostly appearing in gay males. The news stations took this possible fact and translated it into calling the disease gay cancer, this turned out to not only be false but also caused many problems within the gay community. Several other health communication examples were shown in the movie, for example the entire movie was focused around the research being done by the Center For Disease Control. This was an example of organizational communication between the doctors/researchers which where using horizontal communication to attempt to find a solution to the problem and then there was downward commutation between the manager figure of the organization who had to keep his researchers on task and prevent fighting that only got in the way of solving the problem. Doctor-patient commutation was also quite prominent and it was interesting to note that because the disease was proved to be so fatal it was quite difficult for many of the doctors to have to tell the patients that they were a positive match for the disease. Although there were several types of health commutation displayed in the movie I do believe that the most prominent example was media and the role that it played in mass commutation. The media was the main driving factor that led to each individuals perception of the disease which in turn altered their perceived threat and led to their action. According to the health belief model, an individuals likely action is based solely upon their perception of the diseased which is based upon their demographic, sociological, psychological and structural factors that lead to their perceived threat and severity. However, before the individual has decided on an action they are altered by the cues to action which mainly includes the media that can have a strong lasting impact before they decide if their action is likely. According to the Corcoran article, “ As with the criticisms of highlighted in the cognitive models, when dealing with the media people do not necessarily act in a rational or logical manner, and do not process information in a logical way” (25). Luckily in the end the team of scientists were able to correctly identify the disease even though no cure was developed. However I do find it interesting to note the way in which we communicate about disease now in our society compared to the past when not much was known about the vast amount of fatal diseases about and that today in our society we are able to much easier cope with them compared to other third world countries.

Personal

For my personal application I have chosen to discuss the way in which advertisements and drug companies have began to alter the way in which doctors treat their patients. We really can’t go a day without seeing some type of drug advertisement, whether it be on the TV, internet, billboard etc… Drug advertisements are everywhere and although we often notice them and immediately disregard them, they are changing the way in which the patient is viewed in the doctors eyes. Now a days doctors are so heavily influenced by incentives put forth by drug companies because there is a great deal of money involved in the pharmaceutical business. Personally I have encountered an experience when I have visited the doctor in search of medical health for an illness and been suggested a prescription that was outwardly suggested because it was currently “the hottest pill on the market”. Even the most basic medication such as cold or allergy medication is now seen as a commercial comity and will be pushed hard by the doctors because they know that the more they push certain medications the better their will be seen in the eyes of the drug companies. I do not think that this is particularly a good thing in the health industry, although it does promote the general well being of good health, it is being done in the wrong fashion. Doctors used to be individuals that you could look to in search of help, they are now being used by the drug companies (and mass media) as another medium to market medication for the sake of selling the pills rather than promoting the general well being of the patient.

No comments:

Post a Comment