Philosophy

Health communication is a field of research which deals with the social conditions, consequences and significance of communication that is related and relevant to health, both intentional and unintentional, interpersonal, media-related and public. The field of health communication, which emerged in Britain and the US several decades ago, has established itself in German-speaking countries in recent years and yielded a vast number of studies on the interplay between health, illness and communication. The series contains up-to-date studies in German or English which are devoted to this subject area and which consider communication and health from a communication studies perspective.

Our healthcare system is being confronted with fundamental moral and political challenges which affect its basic focus and character, such as persistent and controversial discussions on approaches to health and illness, matters of principle related to fairness and solidarity, medical utopias and dystopias, corruption and ethical questions, the debate about professional identity and commercialization, and the relationship between economics and medicine, to name but a few. This interdisciplinary series of publications encourages the reader to consider fundamental issues related to healthcare. It transcends not only basic medical ethics but also legal, political and economic issues.