ABSTRACT
Health communication as a field of study has been traditionally ill-defined, focusing on health contexts and health-related content. By failing to adequately problematize the conception of health, these definitions confine communication to an ancillary position with respect to health professionals and institutions, emphasizing its instrumental managerial functions. Recent conceptions of health as a state of biological, psychological, and social well-being, however, place communication in the center of health as a central means whereby one can develop, maintain, and/or restore systemic integration. Such a conception, however, fails to ensure the promise of holistic health by retaining the biological function as the central concern of health care. As such, it promotes the idea of social engineering the self to match the dictates of specifically valued biological states. Therefore a phenomenological corrective is provided that defines health as “a state of ontological (i.e., meaningful) unity.” This move grounds health within the experience of being-in-the-world, rather than privileging the object body, and suggests the need for a radical reconception of both health care and health communication.
