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2007 Impact Factor: 1.836
Ranking: 2/45 (Communication), 6/56 (Information Science & Library Science)
© 2008 Thomson Reuters, Journal Citation Reports®

Editor's Note:

In 2009, we have new hope for health as information and communication technologies have come of age, moving beyond experimentation to application to real world challenges.

Many articles in the Journal of Health Communication and other publications continue to support the promise of utilizing the know-how that has been applicable in other sectors - notably finance and consumer industries - into the health care arena for advancing health in developed and developing countries. Yet, in the American health care setting, America lags behind other industrialized countries as only one fourth of American primary care physicians have electronic medical records. In comparison, there is 90% coverage in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and in New Zealand. If there were acceleration of uptake and adoption of health communication technology that would include patient opportunities for better decision-making, better health outcomes could be anticipated. This also is not just system efficiency and speed, but extrapolated into the size and scope of the US, such technology applications would save the health system $88 billion over ten years. Imagine a world in which these could all be integrated for detection, surveillance, knowledge, interventions, and a ''system'' that could advance health. It is up to all of us to garner the wherewithal to have the courage to articulate and support an investment in a health communication infrastructure and private public cooperation so that we can truly develop a 21st century health care system with technologies that support what we deserve.

Read more in my recent editorial.

Scott C. Ratzan, MD, MPA
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Health Communication
Vice President, Government Affairs, Europe
Johnson & Johnson

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Table of Contents 

• Recent Articles in JHC
  • Volume 14, Issue 1
  • Volume 14, Issue 2
• Featured Book Review
  

Recent Article in JHC:

Volume 14 Issue 1 (January2009)
Click on the title to purchase the article!

• A 10-Year Systematic Review of HIV/AIDS Mass Communication Campaigns: Have We Made Progress?
  Seth M. Noar, Philip Palmgreen, Melissa Chabot, Nicole Dobransky, and Rick S. Zimmerman
  Noar and colleagues conducted a 10-year systematic review of HIV/AIDS mass communication campaigns in the published literature, examining such campaigns on a number of critical design, implementation, and evaluations dimensions. They also compared the results of their review with a previous systematic review of this literature. Results suggest that campaigns have changed and improved in a number of ways. Perhaps most notably, HIV/AIDS campaigns have moved from "tools of awareness" to "tools of behavior change," and this change is reflected in the greater use of behavioral theory and increased focus on behavior in campaign slogans and outcome assessments. Despite some improvements, increased integration of interpersonal behavior change strategies (including new technologies) and increased sophistication of outcome evaluations of mass communication campaigns remain key priorities.
  FULL TEXT

• Relationships between Health Literacy, Knowledge about Hormone Therapy, Self-efficacy and Decision-making about Postmenopausal Health
  Rachel Y. Torres and Ray Marks
  Torres and Marks assessed the relationships between health literacy, knowledge about hormone therapy, self-efficacy and decision-making about hormone therapy among 106 postmenopausal women using surveys. Results of their research suggest that there are gaps in women's understanding of hormone therapy and its risks and benefits. In addition, there is a positive relationship between both health literacy and knowledge about hormone therapy and between health literacy and self efficacy regarding hormone therapy, the strongest explanatory variable of behavioral intent. The research indicates a better understanding of the relationship between health literacy and self-efficacy and the impact of these factors on actual health outcomes and decision-making is likely to have important communication implications for both postmenopausal women and their providers.
  
  
• Physician Trust Moderates the Internet Use and Physician Visit Relationship
  Chul-joo Lee and Robert C. Hornik
  Prior research found that Internet use for health information led to more frequent physician visits. However, the effect size was relatively small. Thus, this study explores the conditions under which this effect works by examining whether trust in health information from health professionals plays a moderating role in the associations between Internet use and the frequency of physician visits. This study uses a two-wave panel dataset with a U.S. nationally representative sample gathered in 2005 and 2006. The results show that the effects of Internet use on physician visits are larger for those who have low levels of trust in both cross-sectional and panel analyses. This mobilizing effect of the Internet for those with low trust has some practical implications for the ongoing efforts to increase the quality of health care services for the disadvantaged, given that ethnic minorities and people from low socioeconomic status tend to have lower levels of trust in physicians. It appears that Internet use might moderate the effects of lower trust, and as the habit of Internet use diffuses, there might be a positive consequence for physician visits.
  
  
• Physician Adoption of Personal Digital Assistants (PDA): Testing Its Determinants Within a Structural Equation Model
  Arun Vishwanath, Linda Brodsky, and Steve Shaha
  Vishwanath, Brodsky, and Shaha tracked the actual adoption and use of personal digital assistants (PDA) among physicians within a single hospital in the U.S. Physicians in the study (N = 215) were given a free PDA and their adoption specific beliefs were tracked over the course of one year. The determinants of adoption and continued PDA use were tested within a longitudinal structural equation model. Results revealed that age, position in hospital, beliefs about health IT, and cluster ownership were significant, direct predictors of the physician's pre-adoption beliefs about PDAs. Interestingly, the cognitive and affective determinants of intent to use and actual use were significantly different. Pre adoption beliefs were based on a larger set of beliefs, potentially because higher levels of physician uncertainty during this stage resulted in more elaborate processing of the innovation's attributes. In contrast, the post adoption assessments of the PDA were based on a narrow set of factors. Hence, while ease of use and usefulness perceptions influenced the physicians intent to use the PDA, only ease of use perceptions influenced their continued use. The findings suggest that in order to successfully implement a technology, change agents, designers, and policy makers must mainly focus on communicating the utility of the technology during the early stage of its implementation. At the later stages, however, they need to change focus and effectively communicate the relative ease of use of technology.
  
  
• Healthy Depictions? Depicting Adoption and Adoption News Events on Broadcast News
  Susan L. Kline, Karishma Chatterjee, and Amanda I. Karel
  Kline, Chatterjee and Karel examine whether the media perpetuates stigmatizing views about adoption with an analysis of television news coverage of adoption between 2001 and 2005. Their analysis found that over half the news stories were on legal disputes, crime, fraud, or problematic international adoption cases, stories with stigmatizing potential for adoptees. Adoptees as defective or unhealthy appeared more in negative news event stories, birth parents appeared less overall, and adoptive parents were most likely to have healthy depictions in positively oriented adoption experience, big family, and reunion stories. The majority of news stories did utilize adoptees or their parents as news sources, and nearly two thirds of the negatively oriented stories contained at least one positive depiction of adoption participants. The authors discuss ways journalists and researchers might improve adoption news coverage.
  
  
• Four Concepts of Health in America: Results Of National Surveys
  Gregory Makoul; Marla L. Clayman, Elizabeth B. Lynch, and Jason A. Thompson
  The objective was to determine how large, random samples of Americans define health. Two questions were used to ascertain concepts of health: Are you healthy?; How do you know? (What does health mean to you)? These questions were added to omnibus telephone surveys conducted with two random samples of adults from the 48 contiguous United States: one in 1995 (N=1,000); the other in 2002 (N=1,011). The surveys also collected demographic data. This study focuses on cases with complete data (N=950 in 1995, N=967 in 2002). In both survey samples, more than 92% of respondents reported that they were healthy. Four distinct conceptions of health emerged from responses to the "how do you know" question: Physical, Psychosocial, Capacity, and Control. While prevalence varied with survey year as well as respondent age and education, these four concepts were evident in both 1995 and 2002. There are four robust concepts of health in America. Ongoing attention to these concepts may enhance efforts to communicate about and improve health.

Volume 14 Issue 2 (March 2009)
Click on the title to purchase the article!

• Practicing What They Preach: Health Behaviors of Those who Provide Health Advice to Extensive Social Networks
  Uriyoan Colon-Ramos
  People who are extensively socially-networked (they keep 75+ friends and acquaintances, and almost daily giving friends advice on general issues) represent a small proportion of the population, but they act as dissemination venues to large groups of people. Some of the advice that they provide may be health-related. This study explored health behaviors and attitudes of 'health-networked' individuals: people who specifically provide health advice to their large networks, and examined the sources of information that these individuals used. Health-networked individuals reported more positive health behaviors (e.g. fruit and vegetable consumption) and attitudes than only-socially-networked and non-networked individuals. Future research is warranted to elucidate how providing health advice to a large network contributes to the positive health of health-networked individuals. Exploratory analyses revealed that doctors and health/fitness magazines were main sources of health and nutrition information for health-networked respondents. Through their advice and word-of-mouth, health-networked individuals have the potential to influence the health information of large groups of people and, therefore, may serve as valuable change agents to disseminate health and nutrition information.
  
  
• Exploring Antecedents of Consumer Satisfaction and Repeated Search Behavior on E-health Information
  Yun Jung Lee, Jungkun Park, and Richard Widdows
  Lee, Park, and Widdows provide an insight overview of online consumers' health information search behavior and their post-usage experience. They examine the relationship between consumer motivation, perceived quality, satisfaction, and intention to repeat-search e-health information utilizing structural model. One finding from this study suggests consumers evaluate e-health information more positively when their utilitarian motivations are satisfied than when their epistemic needs are satisfied. The results also indicate the positive relationship between perceived quality and satisfaction and the positive relationship between satisfaction and the intention to repeat-search.
  
  
• Black Youth's Personal Involvement in the HIV/AIDS Issue: Does the Public Service Announcement Still Work?
  Truman R. Keys, Kesha M. Morant, and Carolyn A. Stroman
  Keys, Morant, and Stroman investigated the impact of character appeal (race and status (celebrity vs. non-celebrity) on Black youth's attitude change in response to analyzing TV HIV/AIDS PSAs with high and low involvement message content. Results of the study indicate that celebrity status rather than race is the salient factor. Thus, the use of celebrities in PSAs should be increased in order to effectively engage Black youth in HIV/AIDS prevention.
  
  
• Break it to Me Harshly: The Effects of Intersecting News Frames in Lung Cancer and Obesity Coverage
  Lesa H. Major
  The increase in health reporting has not led to a collaborative and productive relationship between public health experts and the news media. Some public health experts maintain the news media's continuous framing of health issues in terms of individual responsibility is problematic. They propose that if journalists would frame health problems more often in terms of environmental causes and public policy solutions, the public would gain a better understanding of the importance of these problems possible leading to greater public political participation and collective action. Theorists posit that because journalists use specific organizing and orienting frames over others, the coverage influences the way audience members think about issues or topics. Research demonstrates shifts between news frames influence individual social decision-making ranging from political pessimism to electoral support. This research tests whether changing the way newspaper stories frame the top two publicly-identified health concerns in the United States - cancer and obesity - affects readers' view of the problem. Using an experimental design, this study manipulates newspaper story context. Applying thematic (broader themes) and episodic (individual or event) and gain (emphasizes benefits - e.g. lives saved) and loss (emphasizes costs - lives lost) frames, this research revealed significant findings showing that different intersecting frames affects public responsibility attribution for lung cancer and obesity.
  
  
• Usability Testing by Older Adults of a Computer-Mediated Health Communication Program
  Carolyn A. Lin, Patricia J. Neafsey, and Zoe Strickler
  Failure to adhere to an antihypertensive regimen and interactions between antihypertensives and other medicines represent serious health threats to older adults. This study tested the usability of a touch-screen enabled "Personal Education Program" (PEP). Findings showed that older adults rated the PEP system usability, system usefulness and system-use satisfaction at a moderately high level for Prototype-1 and at an exceptionally high level for Prototype-2. A 201.91% reduction in interface errors and a 31.08% decrease in interface time were also found between the two trials. This participatory usability design was highly successful in tailoring its program interface design to accommodate older users to enhance their health communication and technology use efficacy.
  
  
• Developing Effective Campaign Messages to Prevent Neural Tube Defects: A Qualitative Assessment of Women's Reactions to Advertising Concepts
  Lisa L. Massi Lindsey, Kami J. Silk, Marlene M. Von Friederichs-Fitzwater, Heather C. Hamner, Christine E. Prue, and Franklin J. Boster
  The incidence of neural tube defects (NTDs), serious birth defects of the brain and spine that affect approximately 3,000 pregnancies in the United States each year, can be reduced by 50-70% with daily periconceptional consumption of the B vitamin folic acid. Two studies were designed to assess college women's reactions to and perceptions of potential campaign advertising concepts derived from preproduction formative research to increase folic acid consumption through the use of a daily multivitamin. Study one assessed draft advertising concepts in eight focus groups composed of college-enrolled women in four cities geographically dispersed across the United States. Based on study one results, the concepts were revised and reassessed in study two with a different sample of college women in the same four cities. Results indicated that participants generally responded favorably to concepts in each of the two studies, and provided insight into individual concepts to increase their overall appeal and effectiveness. The specific findings and implications of these results are discussed. The studies reported here are not only useful for NTD-related interventions, but also provide a formative research model that is valuable across health contexts.

Featured Book Review

A Review of: "Baglia, J. (2005). The Viagra Ad Venture: Masculinity, Media, and the Performance of Sexual Health." New York: Peter Lang Publishing. ISBN 0-8204-7489-4 (paperback); 165 pp., $35.00
by Jennifer B. Gray
Click here to read the entire review

Save the Date for the third annual National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media to be held August 11-13, 2009 in Atlanta, GA. This conference brings together individuals representing academia, public health researchers and practitioners from federal and state government and the private sector, and provides a forum for collegial dialogue within and across these disciplines. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet with colleagues and shape the future of health communication, marketing, and media practice. Abstract submissions for the 2009 Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media will be open in early January 2009. Abstracts for either an oral or poster presentation will be accepted.

Visit http://www.cdc.gov/HealthMarketing/NCHCMM2009/ for more details.

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