1st Edition

Critical Health Communication Theory and Practice

Edited By Shaunak Sastry, Heather M. Zoller, Ambar Basu Copyright 2026
310 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

310 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book offers strong rationales for adopting a critical view of health communication by demonstrating how theories and critical practices can be enriched by foregrounding issues of power, politics, and culture. In health communication, critical approaches highlight the role of communication in constituting, reinforcing, and resisting inequitable power relations that underlie the... Read more

1. Introduction

Shaunak Sastry, Heather M. Zoller, and Ambar Basu

2. From Symptoms to Transformation: Addressing the Root Causes of Hunger Through Critical Health Communication  

Rebecca de Souza

3. Reproductive Injustice, Feminicides, and the Intersections of Critical Health Communication and Journalism Praxis  

Leandra H. Hernández

4. God, Country, and Family: A Risk Orders Theory Approach to Deconstructing Health Messages About Family Planning in the Latine Community  

Kimberly Field-Springer and Julee Tate

5. Communicating Structural Violence: A Case Study of Entertainment Establishment Women Workers in Kathmandu, Nepal  

Iccha Basnyat

6. Critical Pragmatism and the Politics of the Possible: Communicating for Critically Holistic Health in the Workplace and Beyond  

Heather M. Zoller

7. HIV Interventions, Collectivization Efforts, and Citizenship on the Margins of the State in India  

Shamshad Khan

8. Navigating the Terrain: Applying Critical Health Communication Methods to Participatory Action Praxis with Black Women Farmers  

Andrew Carter

9. Biocriticism in a Time of Precarity: Inventional Resources for Critical Health Communication  

Lisa Keränen, Liliane Campos, and Jennifer Malkowski

10. Culture-Centered Approach as Critical Health Practice: The Body as Resistance  

Mohan Dutta, Satveer Kaur-Gill, Pankaj Baskey, Selina Metuamate, Indranil Mandal, and Venessa Pokaia

11. Decolonizing Health Communication: Reflections on Critical Health Communication Research in Nigeria  

C. T. Adebayo, O. O. Olusanya, and O. E. Ambrose

12. Journeys in Critical Health Communication: Meditations on Being/Becoming CCA Scholars  

Balkisa M. Sissy, Usman Bah, Yixuan Qi, and Shaunak Sastry

12. New Light: Critical Health Communication and Connections to Experiences from the Field  

Urmi Basu, Ambar Basu, Mavis Freeman Essel, and Roopam Mishra

Biography

Shaunak Sastry is Professor of Communication in the School of Communication, Film, & Media Studies and Provost’s Fellow at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Dr. Sastry is the second Vice-President of the National Communication Association (NCA). His award-winning health communication research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, and he currently is Co-Principal Investigator and co-lead of the Community Engagement Core of the Cincinnati Center for Climate Change and Health. He is also a former Senior Editor of the journal Health Communication and sits on the editorial board of several leading academic journals.

Heather M. Zoller is a Professor in the School of Communication, Film, & Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Communication Research and former Senior Editor at Health Communication. She co-edited Emerging Perspectives in Health Communication: Meaning, Culture, & Power (Routledge, 2008) and serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on PPE with NIOSH.

Ambar Basu is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida, USA. He is a co-editor of Post-AIDS Discourse in Health Communication (Routledge, 2021). He has served as Senior Editor for Health Communication, and he co-edits a Routledge book series titled Critical Cultural Studies in Global Health Communication.

“Critical scholars approach compassion not as sentiment but as praxis—analytically and ethically interrogating the conditions that shape human suffering. This volume confronts the silences and inequalities that perpetuate systemic harm in health contexts, asking: Why do we accept such injustice? And how can we, as scholars and practitioners, demand and enact something better?”

Elaine Hsieh, University of Minnesota, USA

Critical Health Communication: Theory and Practice explores how power, politics, and culture are entwined in all aspects of current health communication research, filling a much-needed gap in understanding current health issues. Bridging patients, professionals, and policy, it reveals the urgent need for conducting critical research to transform health communication—and ultimately, health outcomes—worldwide.”

Kathryn Greene, Rutgers University, USA