Improving medical decision making through culture-sensitive health communication – An agenda for science and practice

This review introduces the concept of culture-sensitive health communication. The basic premise is that congruency between the recipient’s cultural characteristics and the respective message will increase the communication’s effectiveness. Culture-sensitive health communication is therefore defined as the deliberate and evidence-informed adaptation of health communication to the recipients’ cultural background in order to increase knowledge and improve decision preparedness in medical decision making, and to enhance the persuasiveness of messages in health promotion. To achieve effective health communication in varying cultural contexts, an empirically and theoretically based understanding of culture will be indispensable. We therefore define culture, discuss which evolutionary and structural factors contribute to the development of cultural diversity, and how differences are conceptualized as scientific constructs in current models of cultural differences. Additionally, we will explicate the implications of cultural differences for psychological theorizing, because common constructs of health behavior theories and decision making, such as attitudes or risk perception, are subject to cultural variation. In terms of communication we will review both communication strategies as well as channels that are used to disseminate health messages, and discuss the implications of cultural differences for their effectiveness. Finally, we propose both an agenda for science as well as for practice to advance and apply the evidence base for culture-sensitive health communication. This calls for more interdisciplinary research: between science and practice, but also between scientific disciplines and between basic and applied research.