Public Health Crisis Public Enemy #1: Communication Dysfunction
Note: This essay reflects its author’s perspectives solely. It does not reflect opinions of Public Health Liberation, its Board, or members.
ABSTRACT:
THE CASE FOR TARGETING BEHAVIORAL COMMUNICATION DYSFUNCTION
AS A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS
There is a Public Health crisis affecting individuals, families, entire communities and our society-at-large. It is the precursor of most preventable illnesses and death. This systemic problem is blended into the fabric of EVERY socio-environmental context.
Human Communication Institute (HCI) and equally concerned healthcare advocates, recognize this specific crisis as the absence of effective communication and listening skills amongst interdependent individuals and groups affecting and exacerbating current public health inequities. HCI identifies Human Communication skills -distinguishable from the biological abilities of talking and hearing – as the #1 determinant of a healthy Public Health system and institution.
Human Communication as a subject of study and skill development, must be deliberately and actively infused into the academic, social (familial, community) and professional settings dependent on the effective exchange of messages. The Public Health crisis is directly related to individuals’ inability, unawareness, and/or refusal to proactively advocate for a healthy mind and body by using the #1 agent of proactive health care – communication.
There is a direct connection between communication and life experiences. Their bond is at the core of all decision making and life solvency issues for each individual as well as the collective. We are all making decisions based on the perception we hold about life. Those decisions are made based in a mindset that has been captured by certain patterns of thinking, speaking and resultant actions. Verbal and Nonverbal language determine behavioral outcomes. Regardless of minimalist views on the viability of linguistic determinism, we cannot separate the way an individual verbally and nonverbally expresses themselves from the way the individual responds to life circumstances. This is how culture is perpetuated and kept from extinction – personally and collectively. “As you think, so you are.” Wisdom
Language Shaping is the mechanism used to create Behavioral Communication patterns that determine output and outcomes. Human thoughts, words, and emotions produce actions/behavior. The language context within which we develop our perception, perspective, personality, is the language environment we create and live in. Communication is not stagnant nor stable. As communication contexts expand or diminish, so does language and the resultant behavior.
All context is communication and communication is context. The Public Health System provides a unique context that brings together a multiplicity of people’s worldviews concerning illness and health care. The recent COVID pandemic of 2020, is a clear example of the varying attitudes cultures have towards illness, healthcare and compliance to healthcare guidelines. No matter the worldview, effective communication is the foundation of understanding, compliance, efficiency and recovery within the individual and within the institutions that support health services.
This paper discusses two major areas of consideration for bringing Behavioral Communication to the forefront of health care discussions as a primary factor of social wellness, (1) the role of language and communication in the development of perception and (2) how the lack of effective communication skills as learned behavior within the social framework, is a major detriment to a healthy society.
