The academic-industry divide in health communication: A call for increased partnership

Objective: Healthcare communication research, teaching, and practice is in a period of innovation and disruption from new technologies, consumerization, and emerging models of care delivery. The goal of this commentary is to discuss perceived barriers and provide baseline metrics of academic-industry partnership in health communication.

Methods: We coded industry affiliations of authors published in Patient Education and Counseling (PEC) in 2018, and attendees and authors of accepted submissions at the 2018 International Conference on Communication in Healthcare (ICCH). We examined perceived barriers to collaboration by summarizing a roundtable discussion between industry and academic participants at the 2018 ICCH conference.

Results: In 2018, less than 5% of contributions to PEC, 16 abstracts (3.1%) and only 7 attendees (1.4%) at ICCH had industry affiliations. Roundtable participants identified actual or perceived motivational differences, publication challenges, and distinct metrics/outcomes as key barriers to collaboration.

Conclusion: These rough estimates provide a benchmark for current industry collaboration in our professional society. We discuss potential benefits of increased partnerships, suggest approaches to reduce barriers, and highlight recent progress.

Practice implications: As individuals and professional organizations, we should promote ethical, multidisciplinary, and high impact research, teaching, and practice in partnership with our colleagues in industry.