CONFERENCES AND EVENTS 23 Wing Shan Kan, Raul P. Lejano, and Yu Cheung Wong. “Social work-led case management in Hong Kong: A relational analysis.” International Social Work (2025). Focus of Study The study evaluates factors that foster and impede interprofessional interaction within multisciplinary teams for case management of older adults in Hong Kong. The research employs a conceptual framework based on Lejano and Kan's relational theory. Policy Recommendations The research highlights the need for in-service training for multiple professionals (social workers, nurses, PT/OT specialists) in interprofessional coordination, along with other institutional support for multidisciplinary teams. Meerwijk, Maurits Bastiaan, and Nicolo Paolo P. Ludovice. “Health Messaging in the Philippines: Guest Editors’ Introduction.” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 73, no. 4 (2025): 413-420. Focus of Study This introduction traces the historical evolution of health messaging in the Philippines, from early 20th-century colonial “medical propaganda” to contemporary pandemic responses. It argues that health messaging has long served as a tool of persuasion and governance, intertwining communication, politics, and medicine by leveraging visual technologies and simplified narratives to normalize biomedical authority. The authors examine key continuities and tensions across eras—including colonial campaigns under American and Japanese rule, postcolonial developmentalist initiatives (e.g., the Marcos regime’s Nutribun program), and modern digital-era efforts—highlighting how such messaging has both advanced public health and legitimated power, while often obscuring complex realities like structural inequalities. The special issue’s contributing essays explore these dynamics through case studies on leprosy eradication, wartime propaganda, nutritional policy, social medicine narratives, and Covid-19 communication strategies. Policy Recommendations Policymakers and public health practitioners should move beyond overreliance on simplified, spectacle-driven health messaging and instead cultivate a broader “epistemic repertoire” that acknowledges complexity, structural determinants of health, and diverse ways of knowing. Additionally, building trust in health communication requires addressing historical legacies of power imbalances and ensuring transparency, while countering misinformation by fostering critical health literacy rather than merely disseminating simplified directives.
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