Mohan J. Dutta

Understanding Health Literacy for Strategic Health Marketing: eHealth Literacy, Health Disparities, and the Digital Divide

ABSTRACT Even despite policy efforts aimed at reducing health-related disparities, evidence mounts that population-level gaps in literacy and healthcare quality are increasing. This widening of disparities in American culture is likely to worsen over the coming years due, in part, to our increasing reliance on Internet-based technologies to disseminate health information and services. The purpose of the current article is to incorporate health literacy into an Integrative Model of eHealth Use. We argue for this theoretical understanding of eHealth literacy and propose that macro-level disparities in social structures are connected to health disparities through the micro-level conduits of eHealth literacy, motivation, and ability. In other words, structural inequities reinforce themselves and continue to contribute to healthcare disparities through the differential distribution of technologies that simultaneously enhance and impede literacy, motivation, and ability of different groups (and individuals) in the population. We conclude the article by suggesting pragmatic implications of our analysis.

The Relationship Between Health Information Seeking and Community Participation: The Roles of Health Information Orientation and Efficacy

Health communication scholarship has built on the health-promoting role of the community in exploring participatory communication techniques in community-based health promotion efforts. Community participation inculcates responsibility, strengthens community bonds, and provides a platform for diffusing health interventions. This power of a community to embody responsible action and promote participation in preventive behavior is examined in recent research on social capital. Exploring the link between community participation and health, this article demonstrates, through 2 survey studies, that health information orientation and health information efficacy are positively correlated with community participation. Furthermore, community participation is linked with prevention orientation, health beliefs, and health behaviors. Based on the findings, theoretical and pragmatic suggestions are presented.

Public Relations in a Global Context: The Relevance of Critical Modernism as a Theoretical Lens

This article aims to interrupt the modernist goals of public relations research that predominantly privileges a management discourse. The emergence of the intertwined nature of cultural phenomena in the context of globalization necessitates alternative ways of thinking about public relations. This article explores the possibilities of postmodernism to disrupt the accepted norms of the dominant discourse of public relations. However, given the fragmented nature of the discursive space in postmodernism, this article advances the argument that critical modernism provides a relevant alternative to the modernist paradigm of public relations research by utilizing globalization theories. It suggests a space for articulating the roles of power and structure situated within the constitutive spaces of discourse.

Participatory Change in a Campaign Led by Sex Workers: Connecting Resistance to Action-Oriented Agency

Studies predict that the number of HIV infections among commercial sex workers (CSWers) in India may rise to 3.93 million. Efforts have been made to stem the tide. But most campaigns have been designed to ensure condom compliance among CSWers by spreading awareness and increasing availability. Absent from the discursive space of such campaigns are the agency of CSWers and their ability to resist dominant social structures. The authors respond to this lacuna in health communication by foregrounding voices of CSWers participating in two HIV/AIDS interventions in India. Based on the culture-centered approach to health communication and subaltern studies theory, it examines data from two sites to analyze how communicative narratives of agency and resistance are enacted in the marginalized lives of sex workers.

Health Information Processing From Television: The Role of Health Orientation

The quintessential presence of television in modern American life has led to decades of research on the unhealthy effects of television. However, recent years have witnessed a surge in scholarship seeking to interrogate the positive health effects of television, particularly in the realm of incorporating health content into entertainment-based television programs. One of the important critical questions in the realm of the positive health effects of television focuses on the amount of health information learning contributed by health information content on television. This article takes a motivation-based approach to health information learning from television, arguing that health orientation influences the amount of health information learned by individuals from television. On the basis of 2 separate studies, the article demonstrates that individuals who learn health information from a variety of television programs are more health oriented than individuals who do not learn health information from these television programs.

Theoretical Approaches to Entertainment Education Campaigns: A Subaltern Critique

Entertainment education (E-E) is one of the most widely discussed areas in current scholarship on international health communication. In fact, much of the health communication scholarship has been historically dominated by E-E efforts directed at subaltern spaces. This article applies a subaltern studies perspective to interrogate the location of agency of the subaltern participant in the dominant E-E discourse. Based on a critical approach to E-E, the article offers points of departure for studying health communication in subaltern spaces. Subaltern voices point toward alternative definitions of problems beyond the narrow realm of problems defined by the core actors in E-E. Finally, alternative positions are suggested for applying participatory communication in engaging with subaltern participants for problem definition and solution development.

Centralizing Context and Culture in the Co-construction of Health: Localizing and Vocalizing Health Meanings in Rural India

A growing number of communication scholars have articulated the need for understanding context as a key component of health meanings. In this project, the authors seek to explore the role of context in the domain of health meanings in tribal India. The tribal population in India comprises people who have been consistently isolated and exploited, and stripped of their rights and resources. Interest in their health is propelled by this marginalization and their existence in the twilight of tradition and modernization. This article, through the use of participant narratives and a grounded theory of analysis, aims to lay out how meanings of health are contextually constructed by tribals in India. The results demonstrate the constant pain and hardship that envelop their lives, their pining for structural capabilities, and a dialectical tension between tradition and modernization in the coexistence of multiple treatment options.

Health Orientation and Disease State as Predictors of Online Health Support Group Use

What are the antecedents to the usage of online health-based support groups? This article draws on the motivation literature to posit the role of disposition-specific and situation-specific motivations in shaping the use of online health support groups. Based on 2 different nationally representative studies, it examines the role of situation-specific and disposition-specific motivations as predictors of online health community participation. Study results point out that intrinsic health orientation is a positive predictor of participation in an online health community. In addition, disease-specific motivation in the realm of perceived susceptibility to a disease or being detected with a disease triggers online community participation in disease-specific groups. The study results provide theoretical and practical guidelines for future scholarship.

The Radio Communication Project in Nepal: A Culture-Centered Approach to Participation

Considerable research has been conducted on the topic of entertainment-education (EE), the method of using entertainment platforms such as popular music, radio, and television programming to diffuse information, attitudes, and behaviors via role modeling. A significant portion of the recently published EE literature has used the case of the Radio Communication Project (RCP) in Nepal to demonstrate the effectiveness of EE and to argue that EE campaigns can indeed be participatory in nature. In this project, we apply the culture-centered approach to examine the discursive space created by the RCP and its claim of being participatory. A critical examination of RCP discourse brings forth an alternative lens for approaching EE and its participatory claim.

Profiling Healthy Eating Consumers: A Psychographic Approach to Social Marketing

This paper explores the profile of healthy and unhealthy eating consumers in terms of attitudinal variables and personality traits. Data from 3,462 respondents to the 1997 DDB Needham Life Style Study were analyzed. The results show the healthy eaters to be environmentally conscious, socially conservative, and financially healthy. They are usually high self-monitors, and innovative. On the other hand, unhealthy eaters are typically insensitive to their environment and health. They are also low self-monitors and hold liberal attitudes toward sexual issues. Practical and social implications are discussed for social marketers regarding target segmentation and message design.