„Health communication scholarship focuses on the many and varied ways in which media and communication shape ideas about health, illness and disease, potentially influencing people’s behaviours, health outcomes, governmental policies and community understandings. We learn about health issues and what it means to be healthy through our personal experiences, families, health professionals, news media, the internet and social media, films and advertisements. Many of us have ready access to information about health risks and actions we can take to preserve our health and wellbeing as well as access to health care providers when we need it, but many also experience barriers to accessing such resources. What role does communication, or its absence, play in these processes? How do various forms of communication promote hegemonic ideas about what health means and how it should be achieved? Equally, what can we learn from practices of health resistance?

This year’s conference theme ‘Hegemony or resistance? The Ambiguous Power of Communication’ lends itself to a range of sub-themes and topics pertinent to researchers and practitioners working in areas of Health and HIV and AIDS communication. More information about the conference theme is available at http://iamcr.org/congress/montreal2015-cfp„