Building the Evidence Base in Cancer Communication

This volume summarises insights from the May 2007 HINTS Data Users Conference into a format that will be useful for the health communication community at large. Accordingly, each author begins with a tie-in to the National Cancer Institutes Health Information National Trends Survey as a provocative starting point for their discussions on why and how to collect an evidence base to inform the science and practice of health communication at a time of unprecedented change. The authors discuss surveillance data as a translational tool for monitoring and understanding the rapidly changing currents of a communication revolution that will most assuredly have a paradigm shifting impact on population health nationally and globally. The book is divided into three major sections. The first section tackles the methodological issues that are confronting administrators of scientific surveys during a time in which the communication technologies upon which these surveys depend are rapidly changing. The second section deals with a moral imperative in health communication research, that of working together to solve issues of health disparities. The third section sets the stage for future considerations in health communication and informatics research. The final section reflects on the lessons from three administrations of the Health Information National Trends Survey. The volume provides grist for the mill to the earnest health communication scientist looking to assess the behavioural and social processes unfolding during the latest, and in some ways most pervasive, communication revolution.