SYMPOSIUM: Communicating Good Health and Wellbeing: Promotion, Advocacy, Resilience (WUN Symposium 28-29 May)

Issues of health promotion and understanding the culture of health advocacy and anti-health discourses have become very important social topics in recent years.

Changing communication methods (digital networks) shift how publics know and understand their own health and medical 'norms'. New social attitudes (e.g., populism) have produced an anti-expert, anti-medical and anti-vaccination discourse that is gaining popularity and has substantial negative health impacts on individuals and communities.

At the same time, there is growing scholarly criticism that narrow health solutions, including some pharmaceutical solutions, discourage patients and the general population from embracing an educated, embodied, whole-of life-course approach and socially-grounded understanding of health/wellbeing.

Across these different poles, health communication and advocacy face ongoing difficulties in communicating well to groups affected by migration, ageing and socio-economic and welfare vulnerabilities.

This symposium brings together researchers in population health, medical humanities, health sociology, health communication and cultural studies to discuss key issues around good health and wellbeing communication in an era in which anti-expert discourses as well as narrow transactional approaches to self-care are clouding important health and mental health communication.

The symposium aims to (a) share some current research and best practice knowledge, (b) develop new understandings through dialogue that aids the development of solutions and advocacy approaches, and (c) build new alliances to aid intervention, practice and policy advice in the health and mental health communication sector.

Appeal: Will be of interest to scholars, postgrads and students in Communication and Media Studies, Sociology, Social Sciences of Health, Health Communication, Medicine, Health and Mental Health Policy and those interested in contemporary cultural issues of bodies and wellbeing.