mama 
Yesterday, I got an email congratulating me, that I am now a member of EUPHA – The European Public Health Association. With a public health background this is naturally an association I feel it only right that I be a member of and I assumed that I would be able to find myself as a natural member fitting right in. So, I rushed to my profile page (as the email encouraged me to) and completed my profile data. My feeling of identification with EUPHA was however challenged from the very first moment.
The profile page is pretty straight forward – name, address, nationality etc. That is easy and as soon as the letters were typed in, I could easily identify with the person on the page. But when I came to ticking off the boxes under “EUPHA sections“, “Field of expertise” and “Topic areas” it was almost impossible to find myself. Nowhere was there any referral to anything that has to do with public health communication!
I must admit I was really very surprised about this. Under Sections the closest thing to fit me was the “Public Health Practice and Policy-section”. Under Field of expertise there was again no communication related option (see below), so in order just to tick something, I saw “health information” as the best option although this could also refer to be health data (which I luckily also have some expertise in):
And finally, under Topic Areas there was neither any reference made to communication, unless you could assess it to fall within “Health Promotion” or “Health Behaviour”.
All in all, I must admit that didn’t really feel represented in EUPHA categories. And I can’t help wonder why communication is not a least a topic area for EUPHA. Is public health communication not a priority? Is it just something that is assumed to fall as a subcomponent of other public health topics and expertise? Or is this not something a public health person need worry about because we’ll have the communication staff to take care of about this?
On the EUPHA website, communication is not entirely
y missing. Thus, the association refers to EACH The European Association for Communication in Healthcare – which is an interdisciplinary non-profit organisation which brings together researchers and trainers in the field of communication in healthcare.
I am however still disappointed in the severely misrepresentation of communication in EUPHA. Public Health is about the health of the public and communicating health messages, research findings etc. to the appropriate people (whether they be the public, policy makers, other researchers etc.) is in essence the back bone of successful public health research and maintaining a healthy population. It should in my opinion at least qualify for a Topic Area in EUPHA’s profil page options.
