Looking back at 2015

Abstract

This has been a big year in global health communication, with the Ebola crisis, health equity, population health, climate change, social and technological innovation, cultural competence, aswell as the role of communication in mobilizing communities, engaging patients, improving quality of care, bringing together different stakeholders in health and social issues, creating policy change, controlling risk, and/or strengthening health systems dominating much of the discussion. This is a year in which the field of health communication has emerged stronger, bolder, and much more difficult to ignore. Spanning across topics and country settings communication has been engaged with the process of changing behaviors and shifting rituals, social norms, organizationalmindsets, and policies, while also reiterating the need for rigorous evaluation processes andmeasures of health communication interventions. Asa testimonial to theprogress that our intersectoral and interconnectedhealth communication community made this year, as well as our renewed emphasis on social and behavioral change as a keyoutcome of communication interventions, the first ever International Social and Behavior Change Communication Summit 2016: Elevating the Science and Art of SBCC (February 8–10, 2016) was announced in 2015. Moreover, scientific sessions organized by theAmerican PublicHealth Association (APHA) PHEHP Health Communication Working Group (HCWG), a leading voice in the field of health communication, for the 2015 APHA Annual Meeting received a record number of 217 abstractsofwhich110wereacceptedaspartof 18 scientific sessions all dedicated to current issues, strategies, and topics in health communication, social marketing, and media. Finally, a new Society for Health Communication was launched in 2015. ‘International. Interdisciplinary. Interactive. Interconnected.’ is their slogan...just as health communication theory and practice is or should be...just as we regard our efforts with this Journal. Covering topics fromquality improvement to health disparities, health literacy, narrative health communication, risk communication, and more, the Journal’s top most read articles in the last 12 months reflect many of the big debates of 2015 (see list at http:// www.maneyonline.com/action/showMostRead Articles?journalCode=cih). Among other topics, themost read articles ‘highlights the benefits of creating a culturally grounded narrative intervention, and underscores the powerful potential of narrative/storytelling in eliminating health disparities in the United States and around the world; or examines communication and procedural barriers to transgender health care and suggests practical steps to help ameliorate disparities and unequal treatment’ among this ‘generally ill-served or underserved population’; or discusses communication evaluation scales to simplify the process of selecting ‘an instrument to measure communication in intervention studies’; or provides insights on provider–patient communication in primary-care settings in the case patients show signs of distress as well as related implications for mental health interventions; or analyzes reported ‘information behaviors and information orientation’ among so-called information ‘seekers and avoiders’ to ‘facilitate the development of targeted health communication and information engagement’ approaches and to address communication inequities both offline and online. The list below features the top 10 most read papers we published in 2015 until now and purposely excludes from the list my own editorials, which touched upon future directions for the field of health communication, as well as strategies to address health disparities in clinical settings by focusing on population health and quality of care improvement, among others.