"This Handbook presents 27 chapters across four thematic sections, drawn from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Collectively, these chapters set out a rich collection of perspectives and research studies on how health communication is theorized, practiced, and contested in a variety of Global South contexts. Each section is structured around a clear thematic focus, yet together they set out to center critical, participatory, decolonial, and community-focused understandings that challenge prevailing paradigms in health communication. The first section—Critical Perspectives on Health Communication in the Global South—locates health communication in the historical and structural contexts of the Global South. Chapters from Latin American, African, and Asian perspectives revisit the conceptual and epistemological underpinnings of the field, questioning how colonial histories, neoliberalism, and biomedical hegemony inform scholarship and practice. Authors adopt strategies from systematic reviews of the literature in Latin America to ethnographic thought from Ethiopia and theoretical explication of the culture-centered approach. Essential preoccupations cutting across the section are decolonization of knowledge, the primacy of Indigenous voices, and building voice infrastructures to counter hegemonies of health. Whether discussing Chinese midwifery reforms, Indigenous ecologies of health in Latin America, or collaborative projects between North and South researchers, these chapters collectively argue for rethinking health communication as a project deeply embedded in struggles for justice and epistemic diversity.
The second section—Participatory and Community-Centric Approaches to Health Communication—brings together grounded accounts of community-driven health communication, demonstrating how participatory practices reframe both health and communication. Case studies from across Brazil, South Africa, India, Malawi, and Tanzania focus on women, children, youth, and persons with disabilities. Theater and community media are discussed as key mechanisms for establishing dialogue, deconstructing taboos, and negotiating social norms on sexual and reproductive health, and maternal and child health as well as pandemic responses. Concepts like Ubuntu in South Africa and bem-viver in Brazil, and feminist praxis in India, demonstrate how locally embedded epistemologies enrich health communication for social transformation. The section highlights how marginalized populations assert agency, whether it is resisting donor-led interventions, forging new “healthy publics,” or amplifying youth voices, thereby situating participation not merely as methodology but as political praxis.
Section three on Responses to Health Communication Challenges shifts to recent issues in health communication in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, offering empirica lcase studies on ageism, vaccine hesitancy, disinformation, digital health, and youth mental health. From the elderly people in El Salvador organizing against ageism, to Luhya epistemologies of epilepsy in Kenya and to COVID-19 disinformation spread, also in Kenya, the articles feature both some unique health-related vulnerabilities and innovative approaches to addressing them. Digital transformations are given special focus: how Kenyan mothers utilize AI-powered chatbots for postpartum depression, the emergence of China’s short video platforms such as Douyin, and the spread of health influencers in India. The findings demonstrate how cultural norms, structural inequalities, and trust influence attitudes and responses to health. Through their anchoring of lived experiences, the chapters resist a one-size-fits-all approach, rather providing contextually informed insights into how communities respond to pressing health emergencies.
The concluding section of the Handbook—Decolonizing Methodologies for Health Communication—presents methodological developments toward decolonizing health communication scholarship. South Asian, African, and Indian Ocean Island contributions place center stage a range of participatory and culturally situated methods. Issues range from participatory transformative research with Indians and Pakistanis living with severe mental illness, LGBTQ+ healthcare communication experiences in India, and the application of mother tongues like Kreol Morisien in Mauritius during the time of COVID-19. African contributions discuss digital ethnographies of indigenous healing among Botswana, Ghanaian proverbs on community radio and their communicative functions, and refugee women’s narratives of exclusion in Nairobi. Collectively, these chapters highlight epistemic justice, linguistic inclusion, and resistance to hegemonic paradigms. They illustrate decolonial methods as not merely methodological decisions but moral obligations, aiming to reclaim voice and agency for subaltern groups and to remap the future direction of health communication scholarship." (Overview of the handbook, pages xxv-xxvi)