Global Health Communication for the 21st Century
Research increasingly points to the relationship between how we talk with each other and the status of our overall health. Neuroscience research, for example, continues to elaborate the social nature of the brain by showing that how we relate to one another influences brain structure and functioning in profound ways, including the regulation of our central nervous systems. The field of epigenetics is helping us to understand in an unprecedented way the importance of social experience for physical and mental health by looking at how it can affect gene expression to influence health outcomes.
In other words, it is becoming increasingly clear that the quality of our interactions matter, from before we are born to our passing, from synapse to society, from the tiniest individual to the largest nation. The growing awareness of the depth and breadth of the importance of our social interactions requires an approach to healthcare that is more complex than traditional understandings have provided. Rather than treating communication as the simple linear transmission of information from one person to another, a Communication for Whole Health (CWH) approach takes a dynamic, systemic perspective that looks at how we mutually construct our social worlds in our ongoing interactions. As such, human problems are best conceptualized by looking at how they come to exist in an ongoing process and are sustained by mutually enacted patterns that can continue to produce the same negative results or can be perturbed to create healthier, more productive patterns and outcomes.
The CWH perspective is particularly useful for thinking about how to create health system resiliency. A resilient health system, whether globally or locally, is one that has the ability to produce good health outcomes for its interrelated members on a routine basis as well as adapt to changing circumstances and respond effectively in crisis situations. It is important to understand that resilience is an emergent property of the ongoing interaction of the system. There is a need for continued monitoring and modifying of system functioning to sustain health system resiliency. CWH provides a framework for understanding a particular health system as a complex dynamic process and suggests ways to conceptualize problems and potential solutions in a way that reflects this understanding.
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