My love for health comms: where it began

To christen this blog, I thought I'd start it with the thing that inspired me to take an interest in health communications.

As I mention on my 'Who am I?' page, my real love for health communications began when I volunteered with the British Liver Trust as part of a placement at Bournemouth University.

The Communications Manager kept mentioning how useful it would be to measure to what extent the stigma of liver disease was affecting donors and general public perception - and so the idea for my final year dissertation was born!


It was so rewarding knowing I was creating a piece of research that would actually help contribute to real life issues. It was then I realised the power of health communication and fell under its magical spell. I have been captivated ever since. 



Just to give you an idea of the content, here is a quick summary of my aim and findings:

Aim: to examine the extent to which a sample of the UK public stigmatised liver disease and whether their level of education was related to their level of stigmatisation.

Findings: 

• the sample did stigmatise liver disease to a certain extent, as they believed it was purely caused and self-inflicted by alcoholism,

• however, this stigmatised perception did not stop the sample supporting a liver disease sufferer, even if they were responsible for their condition,
• results also showed that a higher level of education may loosely result in increased knowledge of liver disease and therefore lower stigmatisation, 
• yet it was found that the type of education and experience attached to it were more strongly related to the sample’s knowledge and level of stigmatisation.

Overall, findings suggest that the existing stigmatisation of liver disease can be easily reduced and prevented by introducing it into the secondary curriculum and increasing public awareness of the other types of liver disease through campaigns and medical centres.

To read my full dissertation, please click here. I hope you find it as interesting as I did - please get in touch with any feedback you may have. Thank you.