Sex Workers and HIV/AIDS: Analyzing Participatory Culture-Centered Health Communication Strategies

An emerging trend in health communication research advocates the need to foreground articulations of health by participants who are at the core of any health campaign. Scholarly work suggests that the culture-centered approach to health communication can provide a theoretical and practical framework to achieve this objective. The culture-centered approach calls for attention to dialogue and locates the agency of cultural participants in the culture being studied. This approach underlines the import of participation of community members in the enunciation of health problems as a step toward achieving meaningful change. Based on the culture-centered approach, this article examines narratives of sex workers to analyze how participatory communicative strategies frame discourses and practices of health, particularly those related to HIV/AIDS.