Nowadays, health communication is becoming one of the fastest growing fields in the main field of communication. It normally involves putting public communication strategies to work for educating the people in the healthcare industry and general public as well about crucial health information.

This includes promotion of healthy living through media, arranging for public health campaigns, designing and planning of health campaigns. The main aim of health information is not only to keep the public informed about health issues, but also to make them aware of where to find assistance for health related issues.

Nature of work:

Candidates with a degree or diploma in health communication can work in the field of health communication in the following positions:

• Health advocate

• Health care counselor

• Hospice manager

• Communication manager for health development agencies

• Medical training supervisor

• Research analyst

• Health Communication analyst

• Clinic public relations executive

• Health communicator

• Medical grants writer

• Health care administrator

• Health educator

They can find job placements in insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, etc… Candidates can also work as an independent scholar or researcher thereby contributing towards the development of health communication science. The fundamental job is to design effective behavior change communication strategies on the basis of participatory approach inclusive of interpersonal and media communication channels, which might enable a dialogue among different people engaged in health communication campaign. They can also work as communication professionals with marketing, public relations and advertising agencies as a strategic expert for communication with a view to create public health campaigns, studying the effects of medical field on health and examining health information.

Government jobs in health communication:

When it comes to government jobs in this field, candidates can find job placement in government-run health care service providing centres and hospitals and they can earn good pay package and growth prospects as well.

Eligibility:

Nowadays, many university’s communication departments offer health communication as one of the subjects and some of the popular institutions like Manipal University, Karnataka, Tata Institute of Social Science and Institute of Health Management and Research are offering courses with health communication as a part of their curricula. The main eligibility requirement to seek admission to these courses is a UG degree in the field of biology or any other subjects based on the institute offering the course. Even medical institutions offer courses in health communication pertaining to medical students alone. Even, these days many management institutions are offering health communication as a part of MBA in health management course, which normally includes media writing and reporting, communication research, public relations and communication training.

How to excel in skills:

As a health communicator, candidates should possess a good understanding of the principles of effective communication in such a way that they can plan and create initiatives at different level right from designing of brochure till a complete communication campaign. Professionals in this field should have to understand how to train and teach intended audiences to deconstruct media messages in such a way that the motivation of sponsors’ can be understood.