Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication: Translating Health Discourse Research into Action

Abstract

The Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) is a university-based research and service organization created to enhance links between the city of Indianapolis, the state of Indiana, and cultures/nations throughout the world. ICIC conducts internationally recognized research on language and intercultural communication and applies its expertise to benefit the wider community. The Center also offers group training programs and individualized tutoring in language for specific purposes and intercultural communication to students, faculty, medical residents, postdoctoral researchers, and business professionals in the community as well as international language educators. ICIC’s research focuses on health discourse from the perspective of intercultural rhetoric. The Center’s strong linguistic background provides a unique multimodal approach to the study of factors and forms of interaction and communication that impact medication adherence, risk comprehension, and patient disease management and decision-making. In keeping with the Signature Center Initiative mandate to conduct research that translates into practice, the results of ICIC’s research translate into action in the form of training to healthcare providers and guidelines for patient-tailored language and communication strategies. This poster features results from recent ICIC research projects, among them a study of linguistic indicators related to diabetes patient self-management and an intercultural analysis of sources of medical information in Spanish-speaking diabetes patients. Also featured are ongoing and future projects: a psychosociolinguistic study of patient voices to be applied to the development of patient-tailored messaging and the health-literacy oriented redesign of the Walther Cancer Center information portal for patients.