This special forum builds on the work presented in the 100 th issue of the journal Health Communication, which included almost 30 essays on how health communication research had been impactful in 2010. A number of years have passed since that issue came out, however, and we think that it is time for an update. We are soliciting ideas for essays from potential contributors at this time. The forum will be a snapshot of where we are now—having an impact takes time—but will also likely include some discussion of how reflection about impact
and dissemination can and should guide where our work will move in future years. Although you may want to include a bit of historical discussion of a line of research, we would like the focus to be on developments and impacts from the last 20 or so years. As we think about impact, we are primarily but not exclusively focused on impact outside academic contexts. We envision a global perspective for the forum. We will include only limited entries on, for example, traditional scholarly metrics (e.g., citation counts, the h-, g- and i10-indexes, impact factors) to contextualize the academic impact of the field. We also hope for contributions that discuss the impact of health communication scholarship on theory development to the broader field of communication and beyond. We are most interested, however, in the ways in which health communication research and its dissemination has led to changes in nonacademic settings. Some of the essays might focus on particular health issues (e.g., cancer, HIV/AIDS, COVID-19) or behaviors (e.g., smoking or vaccination), while others would likely focus across several health issues linked by a health communication approach, research effort, or initiative. Some impacts may, of course, be unintentional or negative/undesirable. Essays could include discussion of impact on one or more of the following areas, though this list may not be exhaustive of the potential areas of impact for which everyone wants to write:
Health outcomes
Healthcare delivery
Policy or laws
Licensing standards
Practice
Training
Funding
Society
Media systems
Environment
Culture
Technology
With essays in this forum, we are looking for evidence, not speculation. We ask that you be concrete rather than vague in your assessments of impact. You might have, or could collect, data that will make apparent the impact of the research that you and your teams have been conducting. We should also note that some essays may want to include discussion of how stopping a health communication initiative subsequently led to a discontinuation of impact. That would be relevant evidence of impact. If, however, a campaign or intervention stops and the impact continues to be observed, one must explore the possibilities that the communicative effort either did not lead to the impact or the effort had long term impact. We are envisioning a combination of some longer essays that summarize large areas of research, as well as shorter essays that report evidence indicating the impact of more focused aspects of research. We are primarily looking for essays that go beyond the work of individual scholars. With rare exception, if you’re citing only your own work, we will probably ask you to broaden your contribution. As many of the pieces will be short essays, we envision a timetable of three months to submit initial essays once we have began accepting drafts of submissions. We have already heard from some people about general ideas for the forum, but we ask now for a more formal statement of interest in contributing whether you reached out previously or not. If you have an interest in contributing to this forum, we ask that you reach out and provide a concrete overview of your contribution idea. More specifically, we would like potential contributors to provide (1) a brief paragraph summary of their essay that includes some discussion of the academic research that has had a particular impact and (2) names of likely co-authors. Please send that information to Teri Thompson ([email protected]) and Andy King ([email protected]).
