ABSTRACT
This chapter reevaluates race in health communication and related scholarship by extension. It argues that communication about the disease is as much a site of interpretation and contestation as bodies themselves. In so doing, communication scholars will bring to the study of health disparities a much needed rhetorical-critical-historical perspective on race and racialization and be better able to evaluate whether racial categories have the analytic force and explanatory power they are otherwise assumed to possess. Health disparities communication research generally falls into two distinct yet overlapping categories: health campaigns and outreach to underserved publics and construction of culturally appropriate and thus more effective health messages. Returning to the question of health communication methodology, it similarly doesn't make sense to compare black and white women in terms of their communication practices and then recommend racial profiling of women in terms of the messages they receive regarding health care.
