Communicating Health Disparities

Revision with unchanged content. Gaps in health care access and outcome betwen ethnic groups have presented long-term challenges to the health community. For health communicators the question is: what can the media do to help eliminate racial disparities in health care? This study answers that question from a perspective of agenda building. By effectively gaining media coverage on the issue of health disparities, or building the media agenda, public relations practitioners could hope to influence public percpetion of the issue and hence induce disparity-reducing behaviors. As to how to effectively build a media agenda on health disparities, this research proposed a model of agenda building. In-depth interviews with health care journalists and public relations practitioners around the U.S., as well as analysis of the media disparity content show initial support for the model: the effectiveness of agenda building is positively associated with how much public relations practitioners agree with journalists on news values and on ways to interpret health disparities. For those who are in the field doing health public relations or reporting on health disparities, the book will provide exciting new strategic directions for health campaigns. The agenda building approach offers public relations and journalism researchers a robust agenda for future studies.