Setting the agenda for health communication research: topics and methodologies

The research field of health communication has grown significantly in the last decades. This has navigated and shaped changes in how clinicians and patients interact with each other to accomplish better health outcomes. Yet, given the complexity of clinician-patient communication, it is essential to have an overview of the research landscape of healthcare communication to navigate where we are and where we go in terms of research topics and methods. The research committee of EACH aims to identify and promote sound and meaningful pathways for the study of health communication.
Through this symposium, we aim to stimulate thinking and encourage dialogue on the current status of our research field and future directions to prioritize, so to set an agenda for health communication research in terms of research topics and methods.
Three researchers at their different career stages have been invited to present their view in terms of: 1. The current landscape and challenges of health communication (what we know so far); 2. Future directions in regard of potentially relevant topics and methods to prioritize (what we still need to know). In doing so, specific methodologies ranging from quantitative (e.g. systematic observation), qualitative (e.g. conversation analysis, discourse analysis) to mixed-methods (quantitative observation methods combined with conversation analysis) and topic-related (e.g. the effect of communication behavior on health outcome; neurobiological responses to communication) lines of action will be presented and discussed.