Health Communication最新文献

This article provides an overview of the risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) initiative led by the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean and the Regional RCCE Interagency Working Group for the academic year 2020-2021. The initiative's primary objective was to facilitate a safe return to school amid the complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic. It provided guidance and resources designed to benefit a wide range of audiences, including children and their caregivers (e.g. parents, guardians, teachers, administrators and others). Emphasizing health and well-being, the initiative transcended academics to address emotional support and effective communication. Key components of the initiative included a multi-faceted approach that involved social listening, coordination and language adaptation, all informed by extensive research. Social media played a pivotal role in disseminating critical information and engaging diverse audiences. Challenges faced, such as resource constraints and limited access to remote communities, underscored the importance of resource allocation, a robust RCCE framework, digital inclusion, flexible communication strategies, and rigorous monitoring and evaluation. The lessons drawn from this initiative serve as a blueprint for future pandemic preparedness and response efforts. Collaboration, knowledge-sharing and the integration of RCCE and social media into strategies are paramount. In the diverse and challenging Eastern Mediterranean Region, these insights will continue to guide efforts to protect public health and community well-being. Moreover, these lessons transcend regional boundaries, offering global relevance and potential to enhance pandemic preparedness and response worldwide.

Declining trust in public health organizations has (not coincidentally) coincided with a rise in health misinformation on social media. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) strategically employed corrective communications to counter common misinformation as an important aspect of its risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) efforts. Whereas past research focuses mainly on the ability of corrections to reduce misperceptions, we turn attention to the broader question of whether and how they affect perceptions of the WHO. We analyze an online survey experiment (N = 1343) with a 2 × 2 design: correction approach (preemptive vs. responsive) × source (WHO vs. user) as compared to a control condition. Results suggest that the corrective infographic significantly improved public approval of the WHO's communication efforts and its credibility, but only when it was shared by a WHO information bot in direct response to a misinformation post. Interestingly, these same benefits did not accrue to the WHO when a social media user shared the WHO's graphics. Moreover, individuals initially critical of the WHO's performance increased their ratings of the WHO's credibility after seeing the corrective infographic from the WHO. The findings inform WHO's future RCCE efforts during a crisis and also highlight the potential of AI-driven bots affiliated with expert organizations to support corrective efforts.

Rumors and misinformation can escalate to the level of an infodemic and significantly complicate public health efforts to disseminate accurate information and promote understanding. Like other parts of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO South-East Asia Region had its share of this challenge. This paper reports on the joint WHO South-East Asia and AMARC Asia Pacific program titled, Building resilient communities against COVID-19: Responding to fake news and misinformation through community radios in Asia Pacific, or simply, the Community Radio Project. This initiative involved examining the landscape of rumors and misinformation circulating in the Region and designing a corresponding online training for community radio journalists, with the aim to strengthen their capacities in managing infodemics. The project also included the rollout of a short mentorship program, as well as the building of an online bank of resources where various tools had been made available to support community radio practitioners in tackling rumors and misinformation. Mixed-method assessment was used to examine the online training component of the Community Radio Project 2 years after its implementation. A majority of the respondents confirmed that the 2022 training contents had helped them and that their respective radio stations had been taking action to help address misinformation spreading in the localities. Additional capacity building, strengthening networks and resources, and research will enhance community radio's ability to address infodemics.

As telehealth becomes increasingly central to cancer care, many patients still report low confidence navigating digital communication with providers. Grounded in self-determination theory, this study investigates how patient-centered communication (PCC) in clinical settings can foster patient activation, thereby enhancing patients' efficacy in using telehealth tools. Using a sample of 495 Chinese cancer patients with telehealth experience, we conducted path analysis to examine how six PCC functions relate to four progressive stages of patient activation (role importance, confidence, action, and endurance), and how these, in turn, predict telehealth efficacy. PCC functions such as shared decision-making and support for self-management significantly predicted higher levels of patient activation. Activation stages, particularly role importance and action, were associated with stronger telehealth efficacy. PCC effects on efficacy were fully mediated by activation stages, suggesting an internalization pathway where clinical communication transforms into patients' self-confidence and competence in telehealth contexts. By linking PCC to telehealth efficacy through motivation dynamics, this study advances both theoretical and practical understandings of telehealth care. To support confident use of telehealth among cancer patients, providers should adapt communication strategies that go beyond information delivery to build patients' autonomy and competence, especially among vulnerable populations with low digital confidence.

Promoting adherence to cancer screenings through effective communication campaigns is critical for the prevention and early detection of cancer, significantly enhancing patients' health outcomes. This systematic review aims to assess the effectiveness of tailored messaging interventions in promoting screenings for cervical, breast, and colorectal cancer. Randomized controlled trials conducted between January 2000 and August 2025, which personalized the intervention content based on at least one tailored psychological variable and measured screening intention or behavior as outcome variables, were included. Data were extracted from the PsycINFO, PubMed, and Scopus databases, resulting in the final identification of 42 studies that met the inclusion criteria. These studies were narratively synthesized and critically analyzed. Findings revealed a mixed but promising landscape: tailored interventions were consistently effective when compared to passive control groups (e.g. usual care), but showed more variable success against active, non-tailored message conditions. This superiority was more pronounced for female cancer screenings than for colorectal cancer screening. Successful interventions were consistently grounded in behavioral theories, and a key feature was the use of multiple communication formats, with the vast majority enhancing text with visual or audio components. This suggests that tailored messaging can positively influence cancer screening behaviors, but its value lies in strategic application. Therefore, a promising direction for future research is to explore the conditions under which different communication strategies are most effective. Future studies could develop and test stratified intervention models to investigate for which subgroups a resource-intensive tailored approach provides a clear advantage over simpler, more cost-effective strategies.

Due to well-being movements and the COVID-19 pandemic, the exclusive use of alternative health (AH) treatments has been increasing even for serious and life-threatening conditions. This phenomenon raises critical questions about why and how people avoid conventional medicine for serious illnesses, giving us a unique empirical context to investigate relative risk perceptions in health communication. While previous research has explored factors such as socio-demographic characteristics, health beliefs, and personal experiences, limited attention has been given to the role of health information exposure in an increasingly complex media exposure environment. This study addresses this gap by examining AH media as a key source of health information and its role in shaping medical decision-making through a survey of N = 1,020 individuals in Singapore, a country where AH is widely used. Drawing from the orientation-stimulus-reasoning-orientation-response model, we investigated 1) the mechanism in the relationship between AH media usage and willingness to use AH versus conventional treatments by probing the (serial) mediating roles of risk-benefit perceptions of AH versus conventional treatments and belief in AH-related misinformation, and 2) the moderating role of individuals' critical consuming literacy (CCL) on this relationship. Our findings revealed serial mediation pathways linking AH media use to increased willingness to use AH treatments but reduced willingness to use conventional treatments in serious illness contexts. CCL moderated the relationship between AH media usage and risk perceptions of both AH and conventional health treatments. Theoretical and practical implications for the communicative dynamics of medical decision-making under relative risk scenarios are discussed.

Cervical erosion has historically been perceived as a severe gynecological condition in China, with its evocative nomenclature conjuring images of decay and moral transgression. Despite recent terminological revisions, the condition remains deeply stigmatized and is frequently exploited within a profit-driven healthcare market. This study employed a critical approach to analyze illness narratives related to cervical erosion as expressed on Sina Weibo, China's preeminent microblogging platform. Our findings extended Frank's illness narrative typology by uncovering a spectrum of narratives, including compliance, shame, resentment, and awakening. While compliance and shame narratives tended to reinforce biomedical authority and perpetuate structural inequities, the emergence of resentment and awakening narratives exposed instances of structural gaslighting and nascent embodied resistance among women. Ultimately, this study illuminates how traditional Chinese cultural values and neoliberal medicalization jointly shape women's health experiences, offering critical insights for fostering more transparent and culturally responsive healthcare practices.

Based on Affection exchange theory (AET), this study developed an "Exchange-Perception-Behavior" model of affectionate communication, explored how Chinese children's perceived father involvement affects their behavior problems, and verified the applicability of AET to the father-child relationship in rural China. By analyzing survey data from 635 rural children in seven provinces in China, the study found that perceived father involvement influences children's behavior problems through a series of mediating variables. The results of the path analysis showed that perceived father involvement indirectly influenced children's behavior problems through two mediating variables, peer acceptance, and mood disorders, and there was also a significant negative correlation between the two mediating variables, peer acceptance and mood disorders. The findings and discussion enhance our understanding of the communication of interpersonal emotions between fathers and children and its effects in traditional Chinese rural societies and provide new empirical support for the application of AET in rural East Asia.

This study examined associations between perceived use of specific conflict styles and mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic in a nationally representative sample of Swiss participants. Specifically, this study investigated how conflict styles and conflict profiles related to anxiety, depression, and loneliness during the pandemic. Indirect fighting emerged as the most consistent predictor of the three negative mental health outcomes. The combination of high indirect fighting and high yielding was associated with anxiety, the combination of high indirect fighting and low collaborating with depression, and high indirect fighting alone with loneliness. Moreover, Direct Conflict Managers-individuals who reported high collaboration and low use of indirect conflict styles-tended to report lower levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness than those with other conflict profiles. Building on existing health and interpersonal communication scholarship, these findings highlight the potential psychological risks associated with indirect conflict behaviors during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and suggest that collaborative approaches to conflict may be linked to better mental health outcomes.

Pornography exposure and condomless sex studies to date have assumed a linear relationship and found only small effect sizes. The present study introduces the Disinhibition Threshold Hypothesis (DTH) in the context of emerging U.S. adults' pornography exposure and engagement in condomless sex. The DTH asserts a curvilinear relationship between exposure to nonnormative, socially unsanctioned, or personally risky behaviors in media and audience engagement in these behaviors, such that the association between media exposure and behavioral enactment is weak to nonexistent at low levels of exposure and strengthens with increasing exposure. Results were generally consistent with the DTH. The bivariate correlation between pornography exposure and condomless sex was close to zero and not significant while quadratic analysis indicated that the association varied by exposure frequency. Pornography use did not predict condomless sex at lower levels of exposure (e.g. yearly, once a month). Pornography use did predict condomless sex, however, once a higher exposure threshold was reached (e.g. weekly, daily). Subsequent studies should continue to evaluate the DTH in the context of pornography exposure and condomless sex as well as other, conceptually similar contexts (i.e. contexts where media depictions encourage nonnormative, socially unsanctioned, or personally risky behaviors).