HealthNar participants visiting University of Antwerp

The Centre for Social Research in Health leads the UNSW partnership in the EU-funded people exchange program on narrative health communication, HealthNar.

It has been very exciting to continue to welcome overseas guests at the Centre, with the most recent visitor being Ms Wendy Jacobs, from Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Wendy is PhD student with an interest in the so-called nosebo effect; potential harm resulting from an otherwise ineffective treatment. Her work in particular addresses potential downsides of providing treatment-related information to women with breast cancer.

Possibly as exciting, UNSW staff participating in the HealthNar program have now started their exchange visits. Dr Philippe Adam and Prof John de Wit were the first to travel overseas for HealthNar-related activities and spent one month at the University of Antwerp. They were joined there by Prof Stephanie Hemelryck Donald, who continues to participate in the exchange progam. In addition to small group meetings on theory and methods of narrative health communication, Philippe and John spoke at an outstanding symposium organised by colleagues at University of Antwerp.

“Sexual health: (narrative) approaches in research and interventions” was co-organised with the AMiCA project, the Netherlands-Flanders Communication Association (NeFCA) and the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Antwerp. The symposium was open to the public and included inspiring and thought provoking contributions from researchers as well as practitioners. The symposium highlighted the novel contributions HealthNar is making in health communication and the much-needed platform it provides.