Health Communication Theory and Research

Catalog description

Principles of communication about health across the lifespan and within health-care contexts. CAS 453 Health Communication Theory and Research (3) This is an upper division course designed to provide students with a comprehensive introduction to multiple discourses about health and health care. CAS 453 emphasizes the communication about health and health care that reaches us everyday through many and varied professional, personal, and mediated forms. Interactions with health care providers were once limited primarily to physicians and nurses. Today, careers in health care are among the most rapidly expanding job areas, and a bewildering array of technicians and technical and professional titles greets the client of formal health care. Awareness and understanding of how to assess these various roles increases the ability of students to interact competently with care providers. Family, friends, and the cultural groups that nurture our youth and sustain our adulthood interact with us about health on a regular basis as well. Awareness and understanding of the impact that interactions with these primary social network members has on interactions with health care providers increases the likelihood that both provider and client will be better understood and better served.Every message about health and health care carries an ethical dimension in its content. The course will increase a students' critical thinking and informed decision-making skills associated with others efforts to influence them regarding their own health practices. It also frames discussion about the ethics of and ethical decision-making associated with health communication. Students will examine communication about health in many situations and contexts to illustrate how it reflects efforts to assign labels to illness and disease, and sometimes the environmental and political contributors to the situation. Students will assess whether communication about health and health care places the responsibility on individuals, institutions, society, or some combination for the particular health condition or situation. Finally, students will evaluate how communication is used to invoke personal, professional, and societal norms of conduct associated with standards of conduct that should promote health and well-being.The course is linked to the courses in interpersonal communication, organizational communication, health communication, and small group communication, as discourse about health crosses societal, cultural, and personal contexts. CAS 453 is one of the upper division courses that may be used to fulfill Major or Minor students' requirements for upper division credits.