KCL Health Communication Lab
Are you interested in how we communicate about health and health care? This can include:
- Clinician-patient communication
- Communication between clinicians
- Public health information
- Policy and guidelines relating to health and healthcare
- Digital health and online communication about health
The KCL Health Communication Lab is a friendly and informal cross-disciplinary group which looks how we might examine health communication using a variety of methods. For each meeting we invite a researcher doing exciting and innovative work in health communication to talk about their work and share their methods, data and findings with us.
From the Welfare State to Digital Self-Care: Historical Context of Tracking Public Health and Quantifying Bodies
In this first session, the reading is Dr Rachael Kent's work titled "From the Welfare State to Digital Self-Care: Historical Context of Tracking Public Health and Quantifying Bodies".
Dr. Kent’s publication provides a historical contextualisation of health tracking and public health communication from the post-World War Two development of the welfare state, through the birth of neoliberalism, until today’s individualising practices of digital health tracking and quantification of bodies. Through an examination of these three phases of public health quantification of bodies, encompassing the socio-economic, cultural and political shifts since 1948, combined with the development and wide adoption of digital health and self-quantifying technologies, Dr. Kent traces the changing landscape and the dramatic implications this has had for shifting who is responsible for maintaining ‘good’ health.
This seminar will provide the opportunity to discuss Dr. Kent’s work as well as consider the theoretical and methodological implications of this contextual shift for research in health communication today.
For details on joining, please contact Dr Deborah Chinn at deborah [dot] chinn [at] kcl [dot] ac [dot] uk.
Reading (Dr Chinn will circulate with the joining details):
Kent, R. (2021) 'From the Welfare State to Digital Self-Care: Historical Context of Tracking Public Health and Quantifying Bodies' In: Ajana, B. Braga, J. and Guidi, S., The Quantification of Bodies in Health: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Emerald.