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Coсreating in the Wonderland: Communication and Patient-Oriented Healthcare in Russia
In the era of post-truth and healthcare 2.0, when lay experts have equal credibility as medical professionals and when the internet challenges the techniques of seeking and gaining health information, healthcare systems are in need of change. The key to the path of systemic changes lies in un-knowing not only the ways health issues have been communicated, but also the very process of the production of meanings of health. In Russia, neglecting the critical assessment of communication strategies in healthcare (or, as the direct translation suggests, health protection), might well result in the field looking like the famous croquet game in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Reconciling the strategies of each “hedgehog” and each “flamingo” through a careful consideration of constantly fluctuating goals might be a much-needed shift to co-creation in Russian health communication.
In this chapter we discuss the messy meaning-making strategies (and their interactions) which characterize Russian health communication today. We open our discussion by situating the game field that produces the meaning of health in contemporary Russia. In this opening, we introduce the key health communicators (pharmaceuticals, governmental or regulatory actors, the institutional medical sector, health professionals, and patient NGOs and communities) and how they share the field. We then introduce the Russian national strategy of patient-oriented health protection and the contradictory meanings that each sector of communicators attaches to it. We elaborate on the mismatch in communication of patient-oriented health protection, discussing successes and failures of health communication practices in different sectors. We analyze how the government, activists, institutions, business, and medical professionals communicate their meanings, the place of other communicators in campaign planning and execution, and how flexible and interactive the practices of each communicator sector are. We conclude with propositions on how the road towards patient-oriented health protection can be built in Russia.
In the era of post-truth and healthcare 2.0, when lay experts have equal credibility as medical professionals and when the internet challenges the techniques of seeking and gaining health information, healthcare systems are in need of change. The key to the path of systemic changes lies in un-knowing not only the ways health issues have been communicated, but also the very process of the production of meanings of health. In Russia, neglecting the critical assessment of communication strategies in healthcare (or, as the direct translation suggests, health protection), might well result in the field looking like the famous croquet game in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Reconciling the strategies of each “hedgehog” and each “flamingo” through a careful consideration of constantly fluctuating goals might be a much-needed shift to co-creation in Russian health communication.
In this chapter we discuss the messy meaning-making strategies (and their interactions) which characterize Russian health communication today. We open our discussion by situating the game field that produces the meaning of health in contemporary Russia. In this opening, we introduce the key health communicators (pharmaceuticals, governmental or regulatory actors, the institutional medical sector, health professionals, and patient NGOs and communities) and how they share the field. We then introduce the Russian national strategy of patient-oriented health protection and the contradictory meanings that each sector of communicators attaches to it. We elaborate on the mismatch in communication of patient-oriented health protection, discussing successes and failures of health communication practices in different sectors. We analyze how the government, activists, institutions, business, and medical professionals communicate their meanings, the place of other communicators in campaign planning and execution, and how flexible and interactive the practices of each communicator sector are. We conclude with propositions on how the road towards patient-oriented health protection can be built in Russia.