Communication Research on Health Disparities and Coping Strategies in COVID-19 Related Crises

Health disparities remain a pressing global concern because the contributing social determinants of health influence how different population groups experience the quality of health, health care, and health outcomes within and across nations. Such social determinants of health include poor living conditions, lack of access to healthy food, safe drinking water and sanitation, absence of social support networks, as well as experience of ethnic and racial discrimination, among others (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion [ODPHP], n.d.; World Health Organization [WHO], n.d.). The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated health disparities among distinct population groups, which are further shaped by various racial, ethnic, social, political, economic, and environmental factors. This global pandemic, in conjunction with other major crises such as food insecurity, unemployment, inflation, and natural disasters, has brought challenges far beyond the disciplines of medicine and public health, causing long term and devastating impacts on social determinants of health for socially underrepresented populations, especially those who disproportionately bear the burden of these crises.

Special issue process and coverage

In this special issue of Health Communication, we invited research that recognizes the central role of communication in addressing and coping with health disparities through and beyond the COVID-19 related crises. The special issue provides a unique platform that gives scholarly voices to researchers who conduct research in regions such as the Global South where the knowledge generated has less chance of getting disseminated in academic journals based in Western societies. Through an open call, personal outreach to different scholarly networks, and practicing a rigorous anonymous peer review process, we strived to ensure an inclusive editorial process that safeguards academic integrity. This process resulted in a special issue featuring collaborative research among scholars at different stages of their careers: new and emerging (undergraduate/graduate student), junior, mid-career, and senior.

During a global health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, countries and regions have experienced unique and interconnected challenges that are situated in larger geographical, political, and socio-economic contexts. This special issue features eleven original research and evidence-based articles from nine countries spanning from the Global South to the Global North: Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, United States, and Venezuela. Given the complexity and scale of the COVID-19 health crisis, the related problems need to be understood and analyzed from diverse academic lenses in medical and social sciences as well as humanities. Concepts, models, and theories, such as trust, health literacy, culture-centered approach, PEN-3 cultural model, protection motivation theory, theory of planned behavior, integrative model of behavior change, and social support, have been applied across the various articles in their treatment of COVID-19 health disparities. The majority of articles represent interdisciplinary collaboration that can further meaningful dialogs and knowledge exchanges to address the long-standing as well as emerging health disparities in our ever-changing social environment.

The articles featured in this special issue address some key health disparities related to structural barriers and racial inequities in COVID-19 vaccination; disparities in maternal health, including birthing and mental health; structural marginalization, including refugee health compounded by poverty; disparities in COVID-19 information sources in the context of immigrants’ limited proficiency in the host language and disparities in online COVID-19 information seeking; as well as issues of trust in COVID-19 information from official sources such as the government and how trust impacts adoption of preventive measures. In doing so, the articles demonstrate the different foci on important health disparities across geographic locations. Strategies and recommendations offered by some articles in this special issue include an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach, e.g., health literacy to address COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theory and Doula care to support birthing. The understanding of such issues and the recommendations based on empirical evidence are contextualized in unique socio-cultural, political, and historical settings. Lessons and strategies learned from local settings need to be considered with the awareness of local and global dynamics. Implementations of concrete solutions to reduce various COVID-19-related health disparities warrant partnership development, stakeholder engagement, and resource allocation.

Reflections

As international students, we came to the United States to advance our academic journeys. We share research interests in global, intercultural, and cross-cultural health communication issues given our own personal, family, and community experiences surrounding health care issues. Our shared experiences with struggles and challenges resulting from our intersectional identities such as gender, religion, immigration status, cultural background, language, socio-economic status have instilled in us an awareness of the nuances which stem from our place in the host society as the other. This acute awareness thereby increases our further recognition of and sensitivity to social determinants of health inequities, disparities, and structural barriers to accessing health care.

As two communication scholars with Asian backgrounds, we have encountered our share of unique challenges and barriers in publishing some research work involving some Eastern contexts and perspectives when reviewers may not be familiar with such cultural and social nuances. We attribute these publishing challenges to other probable factors that could affect the editorial process, such as a lack of much needed cultural and contextual understanding, biases and perceptions, as well as a lack of interest or notion of readership’s lack of interest in certain research topics. We have also witnessed and experienced how the communication discipline has been redefined and reshaped over the years as the discipline is expanding and evolving globally. In this special issue, we feel excited to promote and celebrate health communication scholarship across continents, regions, and countries and thus advancing understanding of nuances of health disparities.

We believe our training and skills as communication researchers have bestowed us with the leverage to empower the underrepresented groups and give them voices in issues that are often ignored or overlooked by the power structure dominated by the majority group. During a global pandemic, social disparities and conflicts bring even more challenges to groups with fewer resources and less power. Over the years, our interdisciplinary collaborative research experiences have allowed us to embrace diverse perspectives that we consider equally important to tackle health communication issues. In this special issue, we are grateful to co-create the needed space to present some extraordinary original research that was conducted by scholars in areas such as communication, public health, and medicine.

Conclusion

Through our work on this special issue, we observed that certain health disparities are more salient and align with on-going discourses garnering more media and public attention, while other alarming important health disparities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic such as food insecurity (Mardones et al., 2020; Parekh et al., 2021; Wolfson & Leung, 2020) and the deep-rooted health inequities among people with different forms of disabilities (Jesus et al., 2021; Krahn et al., 2015; Lezzoni, 2011) require more scholarly attention, especially from health communication perspectives. Such discourses on various health disparities should engage ideological and policy issues across interpersonal, group, network, community, policy, and societal levels. We encourage more applied research that can expand the scope and increase the depth of such academic and policy related discourses that can lead to constantly evolving responses and strategies to cope with new changing challenges amidst the on-going pandemic and beyond.

Acknowledgment

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all the authors for their positive contributions. We would also like to acknowledge the earnest efforts of all the reviewers for their thorough and insightful reviews of the submitted manuscripts that supported and strengthened this carefully curated special issue. Importantly, we are thankful to both the authors and reviewers for their patience during the process of revision and manuscript production in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. Lastly, we are grateful to Dr. Teresa Thompson, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Health Communication, for this kind opportunity to realize the goal of this special issue by allowing it to be a space that is inviting, encouraging, and empowering.