Health Communication最新文献

In response to physical inactivity and rising levels of obesity among the population, the Chinese government has used social media, such as WeChat, to engage and encourage the public to do sports in order to lose weight and maintain health. Images in official social media posts on sports and weight loss constitute an important, but currently underexplored site. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), this paper examines the images in the posts in " (Healthy China)," the official WeChat account of the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China, on sports and weight loss. It is found that the images employ medical-style discursive features to establish authority on sport. Neoliberal themes of individual responsibility and competition also emerge, framing sports as self-improvement and a personal obligation. Moreover, female figures dominate, and often are depicted in alignment with societal thinness ideals, reinforcing gendered body norms and anxiety. We suggest that the discourses in the official media may lead to certain misrepresentations, obscuring structural barriers to sports, and perpetuating sports anxiety and weight biases in the society, especially among women.

In China, the traditional hierarchical doctor-patient relationship can hinder effective communication, especially in emotionally sensitive settings like cancer care. This study examined how patient-centered communication influences the health status of Chinese cancer patients and whether perceived burden and perceived support mediate this relationship. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 271 cancer patients, yielding 217 valid responses. The findings show that patient-centered communication improves patients' health by alleviating their perceived burden and enhancing their perceived support. Given that many patients fear their illness and worry about burdening their families, these results highlight the importance of fostering more active communication and providing both informational and emotional support in clinical practice.

In China, nearly half of women have experienced dysmenorrhea. However, the articulation and management of this female-specific pain remain constrained. By conducting a critical metaphor analysis of interviews with 33 young Chinese women experiencing dysmenorrhea, this study seeks to uncover the nuanced layers of meaning enmeshed within their discourse regarding dysmenorrhea and their bodies. Our examination unveils four metaphors entwined with dysmenorrhea: the curse upon women, the sentinel of the female body, the codewords of emotional bonding among women, and the exclusive dividend of womanhood. Simultaneously, four metaphorical representations of the female body enduring dysmenorrhea emerge: the machine experiencing component breakdowns, the hidden jail, the vessel of sexuality and reproduction, and the product under male gaze. Notably, despite advocating for gender equality, many women strategically appropriate stereotypical gender roles to secure short-term gains. The female body assumes a dual role as both a battleground for power struggles and a commodified entity, where health issues intertwine with gender hierarchies, parent-child relationships, and workplace dynamics, collectively shaping women's self-awareness and paradoxical responses to dysmenorrhea.

In verbal interactions, communicative accommodation refers to the adjustments made by interlocutors to achieve specific communicative goals. This concept is particularly valuable in research, especially in institutional discourse such as doctor-patient interactions, where effective communication is crucial. Using the theoretical framework of Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) and applying Conversation Analysis (CA), this study examines how doctors adapt their communication with patients during preoperative conversations. Analysis of a corpus of Chinese preoperative conversations reveals that doctors use communicative approaches such as code-switching, pronoun shifts, compassionate understanding, conversational structure adjustments, and comprehension alignment to accommodate patients. These authentic data empirically support and exemplify the accommodation strategies proposed by CAT, highlighting the multifunctionality of accommodative behaviors and their sensitivity to interaction contexts. Our findings indicate that the same accommodation behaviors can be interpreted differently in varying contexts and categorized into different strategies. Additionally, specific accommodation strategies are associated with particular sequence positions. Overall, doctors' communicative accommodation behaviors primarily serve two goals: bridging cognitive differences and fostering emotional connections. Our findings thus contribute nuanced insights into the dynamic interplay of cognitive and emotional dimensions within medical communication.

This study analyses the content and strategic features of short videos of embodied health experiences posted by cancer patients on Douyin and examines the audience interactions these videos generate. A content analysis of 525 videos showed that patients posted videos on almost all common types of cancer and that mental health, treatment, and daily life were popular topics. Guided by the health belief model, this study reveals that many videos reflect patients' beliefs about health with a focus on cues to action, self-efficacy, and benefits. Drawing on the theory of rhetorical appeals, this study finds that rational appeals are more common, but emotional appeals generate more audience interaction. According to the motivational theory of role modeling, patients motivate their audience by acting as behavioral models and providing inspiration, although videos that represent possibilities tend to evoke more audience engagement. These results reveal the unique characteristics and value of the embodied experiences of cancer patients and help to reexamine the role that patients play in health communication.

This essay presents a personal reflection on health communication research conducted in Lebanon amid poverty, disease, war, and the constant shadow of death. Through scenes of displacement, fear, and loss, it shows how crisis carves itself into the body and the work. This is a record of knowledge made under fire, and an invitation to confront what scholarship demands when the ground itself is not stable.

This study tests whether misinformation on social media undermines citizens' capability to perceive the factual public health information provided by the government during the pandemic and whether such misinformation impacts citizens' distrust in the government. The results of the survey experiment indicate that the simple presence of misinformation on a social media platform distorts citizens' perceptions of factual pandemic information, while the frequent use of social media shows the opposite but a smaller effect. Also, we find that perceptual distortion due to misinformation does not directly impact citizens' distrust in the government, while political polarization appears to have a larger effect. We discuss the implications of the behavioral and cognitive mechanisms of information distortion and citizens' distrust in the government in an international setting.

Although research has highlighted the connection between healthcare design and communication among nurses, it is essential to understand the experiences of additional healthcare professions due to increasing healthcare specialization. Employing multiple methods, this study explores interprofessional communication (IPC) and physical design in two different hospital cardiovascular units (CVUs). The first hospital incorporated a rectangular single-corridor design (RSCD) with patient rooms along the hallways. The second hospital included patient rooms on the perimeter of hallways in a circular design (CD) and dedicated spaces for co-located staff from multiple professions. Seven focus groups of 40 healthcare professionals (HCPs) from 12 healthcare professions were conducted to elicit perspectives on interprofessional communication, design, and patient care. Observations (N = 8,978) of face-to-face communication were conducted across both hospital CVUs. Patient records (N = 1,930) were gathered to understand patient characteristics and outcomes. Thematic qualitative analysis revealed that HCPs perceived design features as both facilitating and constraining IPC. In RSCD units, greater distance hampered interprofessional communication in acute/progressive care while proximity facilitated IPC in ICU care. In CD units, dedicated spaces for co-located staff afforded proximity, IPC, and patient care communication. While inefficient technology constrained communication in RSCD, updated technology in CD afforded IPC, indicating technology's communicative agency in sociotechnical healthcare systems. Observations indicated that HCPs in CD units engaged in more IPC than in RSCD (p < .05). Patients were similar across units for demographics, characteristics and comorbidities. A key takeaway from this study is that dedicated workspaces for embedded, co-located HCPs facilitated higher levels of interprofessional communication and engagement.

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT become increasingly popular sources of health information, understanding what shapes users' trust in AI-generated health information (AI-HI) is essential. Despite growing use, little is known about how human- and source-related factors jointly influence trust across national contexts. Drawing on frameworks from AI trust and online health information research, this study used multi-group structural equation modeling with representative samples from Austria (N = 502), Denmark (N = 507), France (N = 498), and Serbia (N = 483) to predict trust in AI-HI and its effect on intention to use AI-HI. AI literacy and performance expectancy consistently increased trust across countries, while social norms and prior AI-HI experience showed smaller, context-dependent effects. Health literacy, personal innovativeness, effort expectancy, and surveillance risk perceptions were not significant. Informational risk perceptions had only a weak negative effect on trust, indicating that while concerns about inaccuracy can reduce confidence, they play a relatively minor role in shaping it. Trust strongly predicted intention to use AI-HI in all countries, with path-level effects largely stable across contexts. These findings suggest that trust in AI-HI is shaped more by digital capabilities, perceived utility, and social endorsement than by privacy concerns or health literacy. Future research should examine how digital literacy interventions and transparency standards can foster informed trust in these systems.

Reducing the progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus hinges on accurate, timely recognition of prediabetes risk and the ability to make corresponding lifestyle changes. However, this critical step is often hindered by resistance to and avoidance of health information among high-risk individuals. Drawing on self- and vicarious-affirmation (VA) theory, this study experimentally tests a brief, culturally targeted, message-based vicarious-affirmation intervention among Hispanic adults at elevated risk (N = 1,039). Relative to standard messaging, the intervention did not improve primary outcomes; however, VA increased knowledge compared to a no-message control, and mechanism-focused analyses indicated modest sequential indirect effects on knowledge, information seeking, and behavioral intent. While the effect of VA did not vary by cultural attachment, the downstream pathways linking mediators to knowledge did: self-appraisal significantly predicted knowledge alongside message derogation at lower levels of cultural attachment, whereas at moderate to high levels, only message derogation remained significant. These findings advance affirmation theory by specifying mechanisms and boundary conditions tied to cultural identity, and by illustrating how low-burden, scalable messages can exert effects even when direct mean differences on primary outcomes are modest. Results also underscore the need for replication and extension to clarify conceptual distinctions among affirmation approaches.