ABSTRACT
THE task of writing this commentary was simultaneously enticing and threatening as I prepared to do so. Reading Eric Zook’s essay, I related to much of what he had to say. In 1987 I remembered a conversation with Gary Kreps in which we discussed the need for a critical review of literature of the work that had been done in health communication. He agreed that the movement of our work in this area had been somewhat limited and that future research needed to move in new directions. I did not do such a review; rather, I chose to effectively withdraw from debate and contemplate what it was about the hundreds of papers I had reviewed for both the International Communication Association Division and the Speech Commu- nication Association Commission on Health Communication over a period of 3 to 4 years that left me feeling something was “missing.”
