Health Communication最新文献

Health communication scholars have provided ample evidence demonstrating the ways in which freedom-threatening language used in persuasive health messages evokes freedom-threat perceptions, state psychological reactance, and intentions to engage in behaviors opposite of those recommended by the health message. This study examined a novel mitigation strategy for diminishing these outcomes. We examined whether prior exposure to entertainment portrayals of moral virtue (versus a neutral video) can dampen audiences' psychological reactance, intentions to consume alcohol, and defensive message processing via their psychophysiological responses to a subsequent, freedom-threatening excessive alcohol consumption public service announcement (PSA). The results revealed that participants who viewed entertainment portrayals of moral virtue (N = 50 college-aged participants) self-reported higher levels of elevation, moved, and inspiration relative to participants in the control condition (N = 50 college-aged participants). Participants who were exposed to entertainment portrayals of moral virtue prior to the excessive alcohol consumption PSA also self-reported less psychological reactance and fewer behavioral intentions to consume alcohol following the excessive alcohol consumption PSA than participants in the control condition. Consistent with these self-report data, participants in the entertainment portrayals of moral virtue condition exhibited less defensive message processing of the excessive alcohol consumption PSA via their psychophysiological responses relative to the control group. The results indicate that initial exposure to entertainment portrayals of moral virtue can dampen audiences' cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to a subsequent, freedom-threatening health message, thereby increasing the chances of improved health outcomes.

This paper explicates blame as a psychological construct in communication processes, with a focus on its underlying structure and its mediating role between message characteristics and the public's issue engagement. Data were collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 373) via a Web-based experiment, where we manipulated a news story about a child suffering an obesity-related health risk (asthma attack vs. heart attack) with different levels of preventability (high vs. low) and severity (high vs. low). Findings showed that blame should best be conceptualized and operationalized as a latent construct comprising both cognitive and affective components. Blame mediated message effects on social responses related to obesity prevention, including punitive attitudes, policy support, and intentions toward interpersonal communication and civic participatory behaviors.

This study is a textual analysis of Egyptian queer activist Sarah Hegazi's suicide in 2020. Based on a grounded theory approach, qualitative analysis was performed on 23 media articles from Egypt, Lebanon, and the United States, with particular focus on episodic/thematic frames and the stigma/stigma-challenging frames due to their significance in studies about mental illness. The main findings reveal that Egypt had the highest stigma frames coupled with the lowest sympathy theme and the least attack on the Egyptian regime, whereas US and Lebanese outlets displayed high sympathy and vehemently attacked the Egyptian regime. Further, the study explains the findings in relation to country media systems. The significance of the study lies in its analysis of media coverage in three countries to help us understand how Arab and American media discuss the intersection of mental health and queerness in the Arab world. It also enriches the health communication literature as the first study to analyze the framing of the suicide of an Arab woman outside the context of war.

Provider empathy is a crucial component in establishing therapeutic provider-patient relationships. The benefits of increased perceptions of empathy can support patient psychological adjustment to their cancer as well as patients' comfort and confidence in disclosing to providers, ultimately promoting patient engagement. Guided by the disclosure decision-making model, this manuscript explores how perceptions of empathy influence patient psychological adjustment and how those variables influence patient disclosure efficacy. The model ultimately predicts patient sharing and withholding of information during the medical interaction. This study tested a mediation model to investigate how current (n = 111) and former (n = 174) breast cancer patients' psychological adjustment mediates the relationship between patient perceptions of oncologist empathic communication and efficacy to disclose health information to their oncologist and their disclosure enactment in sharing and withholding. Overall, former patients compared to current patients had more positive perceptions of their oncologist's empathic communication, had better psychological adjustment, felt more self-efficacy to disclose to their oncologist, and shared more and withheld less information from their oncologist (p < .05 in all cases). Structural equation modeling revealed good fit to the data for both current and former patients such that more perceived empathic communication was associated with more efficacy for disclosure, which was associated with more sharing and less withholding. Additionally, there was an indirect relationship from perceptions of empathic communication to disclosure efficacy through patients' psychological adjustment to the diagnosis. Results reinforce the importance of providers' empathic communication for cancer patients' psychological adjustment because patient sharing and withholding of information remain crucially important to achieving holistic care across the cancer trajectory.

Physician-Patient communication (PPC) has been linked to patient adjustment outcomes. However, conflicting results have been reported and previous systematic reviews showed some methodological weaknesses. It has also been suggested that PPC is related to physicians' own adjustment outcomes. This systematic review aims to explore and synthesize the associations between PPC and both patient and physician adjustment outcomes. A systematic search was conducted primarily in five databases and 11.488 non-duplicated articles were identified. Forty-five studies met the eligibility criteria and data extraction was performed for sample characteristics, PPC measurement, adjustment outcomes under examination and main outcomes. The observed results showed that the majority of the included studies were cross-sectional, assessed PPC by proxy-report and reported an overall positive association with patients' adjustment outcomes. None of the studies examined the association between PPC and physicians' adjustment outcomes. Thirty-three studies were meta-analyzed and showed a positive and significant association between PPC and patients' adjustment outcomes (r = .16). Due to the small number of studies included in the meta-analysis, the heterogeneity was high. Subgroup analysis could not identify sources for heterogeneity. Research on the associations between PPC and physicians' own adjustment outcomes is warranted. Future studies should be rigorous in defining clear PPC definitions, directionality of communication processes, and study design.

The creation of audio-visual content and the increase in the use of social networks by society have provided new opportunities for promoting health and the benefits of organ donation. This study analyzes the influence of audiovisual content produced by adolescents in the context of an educational program related to the promotion of organ donation with diffusion through social media. The program was implemented in the fourth year (mainly 15 and 16 year olds) in ten high schools in Spain. In the first phase, students learn about donation and create audio-visual messages about its benefits for society; in the second phase, they share this content on social networks. The influence of the content was measured using YouTube Analytics. In addition, a questionnaire was administered after the program to measure the way in which they shared the content on social networks. A total of 391 students participated in program, submitting 63 short films that obtained 104,912 views. The short films focused on appealing to society about the need for organs and the benefits of the organ donation and transplantation process. The social network that was used most frequently to share the content was WhatsApp (81.8%). Educating teenagers and turning them into prescribers of the health benefits of the organ donation and transplantation process through the use of social networks could be a good tool that can be exported to other fields of health.

Millions of people around the world are affected by mental illness, yet a substantive portion of individuals with mental illness do not regularly seek help from medical professionals or utilize mental health services. Help-seeking involves an individual's communicative intention and behaviors to solicit advice and/or treatment and thus is essentially a communicative process. This manuscript reports a longitudinal study that examined predictors and outcomes of help-seeking in mental illness contexts. Three-wave data from 223 participants clinically diagnosed with one or more mental illness conditions were collected and analyzed. Results indicated that expected outcomes of help-seeking from counselors were significantly associated with participants' communication efficacy and target efficacy at Wave 1, which subsequently influenced motivation to seek help and actual help-seeking behaviors at Wave 2. Actual help-seeking behaviors predicted post-traumatic growth and cognitive reappraisal at Wave 3. Importantly, communication efficacy and target efficacy interacted in their effects on help-seeking motivation and behaviors. Theoretical implications for help-seeking communication processes and practical implications for mental health help-seeking are discussed.

The association of medical experts with politically left-leaning cities and states early in the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated vaccine hesitancy in right-leaning states of the US. Criticism from outside experts violates rules of communication between social groups (i.e. an intergroup sensitivity effect), leading to rejection of messages promoting vaccine safety and efficacy. In two studies, we document the effects of shared geographical group membership for medical expert messages promoting vaccination. We also found evidence that satisfying conversational norms against intergroup criticism reduces message rejection. Specifically, an invitation from ingroup political elites for a doctor to speak reduced the negative effects of unshared group identity.

Although the influence of celebrities on public health-related attitudes and behaviors is well established, the specific role that celebrity examples play in shaping health-related social norm perceptions is not well understood. To examine the effect of celebrities on social norm perceptions, young adults were randomly assigned to read news articles about vaping that either featured one of four film stars using a vape pen or did not contain any celebrity exemplar. The presence or absence of a celebrity exemplar did not affect readers' perceptions of vaping social norms. However, three types of audience involvement with the celebrities - liking, parasocial relationship strength, and wishful identification, were examined as mediators of the relative effects of the different celebrities on vaping norm perceptions. The results suggest that celebrities who people like more and those who they wishfully identify with less can wield a greater influence on social norms. PSR strength did not mediate indirect effects of celebrity on social norm perceptions. These findings indicate that celebrities can shape public perceptions of social norms through some types of involvement.

Youth offer valuable insight on health communication needs and solutions in their communities. We propose youth participatory action communication research (YPACR) as a model for health campaign development that engages youth perspectives in applying systematic theory-informed communication research to addressing youth-identified health priorities. YPACR informed a series of paid high school internship programs in West Philadelphia, in which youth interns identified mental health help-seeking communication as a need among peers. In Phase 1, guided by the reasoned action approach and Hornik & Woolf method, youth interns conducted a survey measuring behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, and control beliefs associated with mental health help-seeking, as well as trusted sources of mental health information, among local high school students. Survey results suggested control (self-efficacy) was an important message target and peers were trusted mental health information sources. In Phase 2, youth interns developed TikTok-style messages focused on strengthening control beliefs and promoting a youth-selected mental health support resource. Youth interns distributed an online survey experiment to test whether youth-created messages shown alongside resource information increased help-seeking self-efficacy compared to an information-only control. The YPACR framework contributed to youth-relevant campaign goals, study measurements, recruitment approaches, data interpretation, and message design. We discuss the benefits and challenges of this youth-driven health campaign development model and recommendations for future research.