Effective health communication is more essential than ever during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Ever-changing information, conflicting views and advice, and uncertainty and anxiety among the world’s populations have challenged many well-established and effective health communication practices. Medical and healthcare professionals face the daily reality of difficult conversations about death and dying, the need to establish rapport with patients and families remotely, and significant burnout, among other challenges. Communication with chronically ill patients and those with acute diseases other than COVID-19 is also disrupted due to widespread restrictions on access to medical facilities and services. Medical educators confront new challenges in providing students with practical exposure in live clinical contexts to achieve graduate competencies. Some medical students were fast-tracked to graduation to join the frontline in this unprecedented fight. These are just a sample of the many issues brought to the fore by the pandemic. Meanwhile, other critical issues related to effective health communication existed pre-pandemic remain.

HKU Research and Impact Initiative on Communication in Healthcare (HKU RIICH) invites you to join us at the 3rd International E-Symposium on Communication in Health Care (co-organised by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) that will engage with critical issues in health communication pre-, during and post- COVID-19. This two-day event brings together international academics and practitioners from across relevant disciplines of health communication, linguistics, social sciences, medical education, and medicine to share their ongoing research and practical insights in a collaborative effort to address the challenges of health communication in the current times, and lessons going forward.