| Health communication is about improving health outcomes by encouraging behavior modification and social change. Nowadays disease control and public health protection are a challenging yet necessary task for health agencies throughout the world. The related health communication is often aimed at solving practical health problems with a focus on identifying, detecting and resolving substantial ones concerning disease control and prevention, and health promotion. Measles virus has caused millions of deaths since its emergence as a zoonosis thousands of years ago. In the face of the hazardous effects of measles, health departments in various countries and regions actively cooperate with the media in promoting public health awareness of the importance of measles vaccination in an effort to nip the measles virus in the bud.This paper has discussed the current situation of the prevention and cure of measles in the world, including the related goals and strategies, and made a feasibility analysis of measles eradication. In addition, it has described the development of health communication on the media landscape and based on media coverage of measles vaccination in China and the UK, expounded the similarities and differences in health communication model between China and the western world as seen in the prevention and cure of measles. This article tries to broaden the perspective by considering China and comparing it to a western country. A content analysis of newspaper coverage of vaccination issues in the UK and China shows, first, that the government-supported’mainstream position’dominates the Chinese coverage while the British media frequently refer to criticism and controversy. Second, scientific expertise in the British coverage is represented by experts from the health and science sector but by experts from health agencies in the Chinese coverage. These results are discussed with respect to implications for risk communication and scientists’ involvement in public communication. |
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