What is health communication and how does it affect the HIV/AIDS continuum of care? A brief primer and case study from New York City.

This article responds to key questions related to health communication that are commonly asked in the HIV/AIDS arena: "What is health communication?"; "What is its role beyond HIV prevention?"; and "How can it be used to achieve better HIV/AIDS outcomes?" We review how communication scientists think about their own discipline and build on a basic definition of communication as a fundamental human process without which most individual, group, organizational, and societal activities could not happen, including how people think about and respond to health issues such as HIV and AIDS. Diverse factors and processes that drive human behavior are reviewed, including the concept of ideation (what people know, think, and feel about particular behaviors) and the influence of communication at multiple levels of a social ecological system. Four main functions of communication-information seeking and delivery, persuasion, social connection and structural/cultural expression and maintenance-are linked to a modified version of the Department of Health and Human Services Continuum of Care and are used to conceptualize ways in which communication can achieve better HIV/AIDS outcomes.