title: Afterword: elaborating health and medicine's publics.
abstract: This essay argues that medical and health humanists interested in the rhetorical work of publics can extend their research by attending to embodiment and infrastructure. In addition to discussing how such strategies are illustrated in the essays appearing in this special issue, I relate them to the rhetorical study of personal health records (PHRs) as described in consumer-directed arguments. I conclude by posing two questions to health and medical humanists: "How do discursive constructions of publics and more specific instantiations of embodied experiences mutually shape each other?" and "What do the infrastructures of health and medical users look like and involve in their enactment?"
authors.affiliation: Department of Writing & Rhetoric, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA, bscott@ucf.edu.
authors.forename: J Blake
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Scott
mesh_terms: D003258:Consumer Behavior; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D006291:Health Policy; D006809:Humanities; D006801:Humans; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D011634:Public Health; D014481:United States
references.citation: J Health Commun. 2010;15 Suppl 2:183-96
references.pmid: 20845203