Exploring Health Communication: Theories, Models, and Practices

This assignment provides a comprehensive overview of health communication, a multidisciplinary field focused on exchanging health-related information to influence and empower various groups, including policymakers, healthcare professionals, and patients. It highlights key characteristics such as cost-effectiveness, inclusivity, and evidence-based approaches. The assignment also explores theoretical and planning models, with a specific focus on the biomedical model, examining its implications for communication strategies. The biomedical model emphasizes a scientific, efficient, and focused approach to health communication. The assignment references relevant literature to support the discussion of health communication principles and models. The document is a great resource for students seeking to understand the core concepts of health communication.

Communication of Healthcare
Health communication is a multidisciplinary field of practice, research, and theory that
deals with reaching of a variety of groups and population with the intent to exchange ideas,
methods as well as health-related information (Moore et al., 2018). Its main goal is to empower,
influence, support and engage various people such as policymakers, healthcare professionals,
special groups, communities, organizations, and patients among others to introduce, adopt and
champion for ideas that will generally enhance the public health, individual and community
outcome.
Features of Communication Health
There are various characteristics of health communication. Some of such include:
 Cost-effective
 Inclusive of vulnerable as well as underserved populations
 People-centered
 Multidisciplinary
 Relationship building
 Strategic
 Process-oriented
 Evidence-based
 Creative in support of a strategy
 Media and audience-specific
 Aimed at both social and behavioral results
Health communication program, health-related encounter, and message influences the
perceptions or decisions about a specific health issue in a number of ways. One is by offering a

basis for communication implementation, planning as well as evaluation. Two is that it inspires a
particular communication technique.
Theoretical and Planning Models
One of the major planning and theoretical models in communication health is the
biomedical model. The biomedical model bases its argument on the fact that an ill health is
considered as a physical phenomenon. It has the ability to be treated, identified and explained
using particular physical meanings among others (Foronda, MacWilliams & McArthur, 2016)
The main implications of the biomedical model is that it facilitates focused, efficient, doctrinaire,
strictly scientific and authoritarian communications. Additionally, such a communication usually
lacks the empathy that involves the major feelings of the target audience or the patient's feelings.
The biomedical model is considered as an efficient theoretical and planning model because of the
efficiency, scientific, focused communication without empathy based on the major feelings of
the target audience.

References
Foronda, C., MacWilliams, B., & McArthur, E. (2016). Interprofessional communication in
healthcare: An integrative review. Nurse education in practice, 19, 36-40.
Moore, P. M., Rivera, S., Bravo‐Soto, G. A., Olivares, C., & Lawrie, T. A. (2018).
Communication skills training for healthcare professionals working with people who have
cancer. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (7).