Constituting Care: Relational Approaches to Health and Communication
A special issue of Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 August 2026 | Viewed by 58
Special Issue Editor
Interests: family communication; health communication; interpersonal communication; popular culture; qualitative inquiry; relational communication; sexual communication; sexual identities; social media
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Healthcare, entitled “Constituting Care: Relational Approaches to Health and Communication”. Relational communication is a foundational yet often underexplored dimension of health and care. Moving beyond transactional or outcome-based models, this Special Issue centers communication as a dynamic, identity-shaping, and meaning-making process. Understanding how individuals negotiate care through interpersonal, family, institutional, and cultural relationships provides crucial insights into emotional and physical well-being, especially for marginalized and underrepresented populations.
In an era shaped by social inequality, technological change, and renewed attention to care infrastructures, it is vital to examine how communication practices construct, sustain, or challenge meanings of health and healing. This Special Issue aims to highlight the importance of viewing communication, not only as a tool within healthcare but as a constitutive force that shapes identities, relationships, and health outcomes.
This Special Issue aims to expand the scope of Healthcare by examining how care is enacted, negotiated, or resisted through communicative relationships. Aligned with the journal’s focus on interdisciplinary health research, this Issue invites authors to submit studies that explore care as a communicative and relational practice embedded in identity, embodiment, and social structures. Contributors may draw from interpersonal, family, institutional, organizational, or cultural perspectives and use a wide range of methodological approaches—including critical, qualitative, and autoethnographic methods—to investigate the relational dimensions of health and well-being.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews as well as compelling essays are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following areas:
- Explorations of care in family, romantic, or chosen relationships;
- Identity and embodiment in health interaction (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, age, ability);
- Experiences of health and illness in marginalized or underserved communities;
- Autoethnographic and narrative approaches to health and caregiving;
- Communication within care infrastructures and institutional systems;
- Critical or interpretive approaches to patient–provider interaction;
- Digital health communication, AI, and mediated care relationships;
- Reflexivity and relational ethics in health and caregiving research;
- Care as a practice of resistance, resilience, or identity negotiation;
- Constitutive communication theories and their application to health contexts.
Prof. Dr. Jimmie Manning
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- identity
- relationships
- interpersonal communication
- embodiment
- family communication
- critical health studies
- reflexivity
- care work
- narrative
- meaning making in health contexts
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
