INTRODUCING: MEDIA HEALTH LAB

Health communication has become a central concern across global health, public health policy, media practice, and research. Questions of trust, representation, digital infrastructures, and responsibility shape how health-related knowledge circulates and how it is acted upon. At the same time, work on these questions is often dispersed across disciplines, institutions, and professional contexts.

Media Health Lab was developed in response to this fragmentation.

The platform brings together perspectives from research, practice, and media work that engage with health communication from different positions, but often address overlapping challenges. Rather than proposing a single framework or approach, Media Health Lab creates space for exchange, reflection, and critical attention to how health communication is currently produced, mediated, and received.

A platform grounded in interdisciplinarity

Health communication does not belong to one field alone. It is shaped by public health research, social and cultural analysis, journalism, design, policy work, and technological development. Media Health Lab treats interdisciplinarity not as an add-on, but as a necessary condition for understanding contemporary health communication.

Contributions to the platform reflect this diversity of perspectives and professional backgrounds, allowing different forms of expertise to coexist and inform one another.

The podcast as a starting point

At the core of Media Health Lab is a podcast series that features conversations with experts working in health communication across different contexts. These conversations focus on current developments, methodological questions, and practical experiences, as well as on uncertainties and open issues in the field.
Podcast episodes are accompanied by written contributions on the website. These may take the form of expanded reflections, contextual essays, or independent think pieces that engage with topics raised in the conversations or address related developments in global health communication.

Responding to a changing field

Digital platforms, new media formats, and emerging technologies continue to reshape how health information circulates and how publics form around health-related issues. At the same time, long-standing questions of inequality, access, and accountability remain central.

Media Health Lab aims to engage with both dimensions: current trends and structural questions. The goal is not to simplify complexity, but to make ongoing debates and emerging ideas accessible in formats that support sustained engagement.

What Media Health Lab offers

Media Health Lab is a space for carefully developed content on health communication and media, combining analytical depth with attention to practice. It is intended for professionals working in global health, public health institutions, communication and media, as well as for researchers and practitioners interested in how health communication is evolving.

Rather than offering definitive answers, Media Health Lab contributes to an ongoing conversation about how health, media, and communication intersect - and how this intersection can be approached thoughtfully and responsibly.