Monolingual monologue: regional issues of professional communication from Pacific Health Dialog

The Pacific Health Dialog (PHD) is a Journal of Community Health and Clinical Medicine with a Pacific. focus. A analysis of all nine PHD issues from 1994 to 1998 was made for origin of author and content. Tally sheets were used to compile data from which the tables were constructed. The results showed that of the 15,000 journals printed 70% were distributed to Pacificans. There were 287 items published by 489 authors of which 37% were Pacificans who were also the first or only author in 37% (excluding the authors of book reviews, editorials reprints, letters and abstracts). The contents of PHD have all been written in English even though the policy allows for any major Pacific language. Therefore a monolingual journal has emerged in spite of a multilingual policy. There has been minimal dialogue or discussion in PHD and not much of the content has been challenged, so the papers have become monologues by the authors. Thus we have a monolingual monologue. PHD is donor dependent with a hand to mouth existence. Funding covers only part of the expenditure and the balance comes from a 'labour of love' from many people. Despite this, PHD continues to grow. The development of PHD has demonstrated that a participatory media can increase the Pacificans role in health information dissemination throughout the Pacific. Many of the Pacific authors (73.5%) have never published previously. Since 1994 PHD has come a long way and contributed much to pacific based research. It addresses a wide variety of topics and problems and not just the need for medical information. PHD has become the prototype for regional health communication in terms of participation, ownership, development, maintenance and its use of 'labour of love' resources.