Looking back at our Journal in 2016!

‘… JCIH aims to help bridge communication gaps between various communities where they exist and highlight the role of effective communication…This more holistic approach to communication in healthcare was seen as crucial to the Journal's aims and scope.’ (Simone Beckett, 2008)¹

As 2016 marked the completion of our transition to Taylor & Francis, a world-leading academic and professional publisher, as well as my 3 -year anniversary at the helm of the Journal, I decided to go back to the editorials from early issues of the Journal of Communication in Healthcare (JCIH)—now also known with its subtitle, Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health, which we introduced in late 2013 when I started. Here are some findings from this quick review and most importantly a few thoughts on how we have been doing in 2016.

What is unique about our Journal is that since our inception we have been committed to building a diverse community. In a world where silos are unfortunately too often the norm instead of the exception, here I am at the wheel of a Journal that always aspired to be inclusive of multiple perspectives by bringing together the different stakeholders in global health communication theory and practice. Not that I would have had it in any other way—my own work and writing is about bridging the existing silos among various health and social fields, so that together we can address the pressing issues of our times and ultimately benefit our communities, patients, and cities. Yet the seed for our current vision for the kind of Journal we strive to be was already planted in the first ever issue of the Journal within an editorial by the publisher at that time.¹ Ultimately, this vision reflects our belief in an integrated, inclusive, and multidisciplinary approach to health communication research and practice.

As a pleasant surprise, I also learned from my quick review of early editorials that my esteemed colleague and predecessor, Mario Nacinovich, whom I actually did not know at the time, quoted my own definition of ‘health communication’ to frame the aims and scope of the Journal in his inaugural editorial.² A coincidence? A presage? Or just time to move on with this retrospection?

So, how did we do in 2016? What are some of the key words we can use to define JCIH and its presence this past year?

Forward looking

Our editorials, opinion pieces, commentaries, and interviews review trends and emerging themes in the field of global health communication, across healthcare, public health, and community development. They also provide our readers and authors with insights on the kinds of topics we see as shaping the field and consequently our Journal. An example is the interview with Dr Dwayne Proctor of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (‘Keeping communication in the health equity agenda’) we publish in this issue. In 2016, these quarterly pieces focused on domains as varied as the implications of community engagement in behavioural and social change communication, the limitations of existing health literacy measures for use in developing countries, the evolving nature of risk communication and outbreak response interventions in Ebola and Zika, media ethics in the age of global public conversations, the role of the mass media in healthcare advocacy and education, reports on national and international conferences, and perspectives on training needs and skills for future generations of health communication professionals.

Visible

Many of our articles and opinion pieces received considerable attention in 2016. When the Zika outbreak broke earlier in the year, we published an authoritative perspective in our March 2016 issue on the importance of socializing the outbreak response and engaging a variety of professionals and communities in intervention design and implementation. A special themed section we published in our July 2016 issue in collaboration with members of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Health Communication Working Group (HCWG) included articles and opinions from scientific sessions and other events organized by HCWG at the 2016 APHA Annual Meeting. The section was widely shared on the HCWG networks and media. Our online circulation (measured as numbers of full-text downloads) and page views has steadily increased every year since 2013, with an overall 89% increase in the number of full-text downloads. We credit our readers, authors, and reviewers for the increase in the number and quality of the submissions we receive.

Global

As a testimonial to the increasingly global scope of JCIH, in 2016 we published research articles and/or case studies on health communication interventions from the United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Canada, Malawi, Iran, and Italy. We received submissions from 14 countries, with still a majority from the United States and the United Kingdom. With an editorial board that already represents the unique perspectives of 11 countries as well as a variety of national and global organizations across different sectors, JCIH is increasingly becoming the go-to resource for country-specific and global research and strategies in the field of health communication.

Interdisciplinary

Our commitment to examine and engage in relevant topics across professional sectors—including but not limited to healthcare, public health, and community development—is reflected in the Aims and Scope of our Journal. The articles we published in 2016 reflect this commitment and bring to our readers an enriched perspective on the role of health communication not only in preventing and treating disease but also in addressing the many determinants of health; building community around health and social issues; engaging patients, providers, and the community-at-large; achieving social and behavioural results in a variety of groups and populations; fostering social movements and multisectoral collaborations; and improving overall health and social outcomes. This will not be possible without the kind of interdisciplinarity that is reflected in each of the Journal's issues and, most importantly, that we seek to encourage via our vision for the Journal.

Connected

‘Community’ is a key word at JCIH. We see our role as one of bridging research with practice and contributing to creating community around key issues in health communication. With a focus on promoting communication strategies that may encourage improved patient, community, and population health outcomes, we count on our readers, authors, editorial board, and reviewers for their much-valued input on how we are doing. We are thankful to you all for your suggestions and dedication this past year. We always feel that we just got started, so please continue to stay engaged!

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In this issue

In addition to the aforementioned interview with Dr Dwayne Proctor on the role of communication in advancing health equity, the articles in this issue reflect the interdisciplinary framework we use to measure our endeavours at the Journal. Spanning a variety of topics, including patients’ perception of physicians’ cultural competence and its connection to patients’ fear, implications for public health practice of Facebook use by public health professionals, house-to-house interpersonal communication strategies in the containment of Ebola, doctor–patient computer-mediated communications, healthcare communication needs of pediatric patients, and the role of primary care in the treatment and management of persons affected by obesity, the articles in this issue feature data and case studies from the United States, Canada, and Nigeria, among others. We hope you enjoy this first issue in 2017 and find it useful. Thank you for your readership!