The public speaks back: health communication in Britain, 1980s-2020s

The public speaks back: health communication in Britain, 1980s-2020s

Stay at home. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. The Covid-19 pandemic has popularised and globalised a set of simple public health messages. Yet, as even the most cursory scroll through a newsfeed will demonstrate, the reception of these messages is anything but simple. Mask refuseniks and antivaxxers represent the more extreme end of a spectrum of public opinion and action that has sometimes confused and confounded public health authorities. In many ways this is surprising, as health educators have known about some of the problems surrounding public health communication for over 40 years. In this talk I will draw on a set of examples of public health education in Britain from the 1980s to the 2020s to illustrate the complexities of the relationship between public health and its publics.

This public lecture is cohosted by the Laureate Centre for History and Population at UNSW Sydney and the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine, NSW Branch.

Image Credit: Great Britain. Central Office of Information. Prevention of food poisoning by covering hand infections with a plaster, avoiding touching food, and keeping hands clean. Colour lithograph, ca. 1963 (?). Wellcome Collection.