Health Communication as Capability: Gig Workers Freedoms Through Sens Approach

Title

Health Communication as Capability: Gig Workers Freedoms Through Sens Approach

Creator

Kalbalia, Pooja; Koushik, Kailash

Description

The rapid growth of the gig economy has increased the number of delivery-platform workers, whose precarious employment conditions expose them to health risks while limiting their ability to utilize existing health resources. This article employs Amartya Sens Capability Approach (CA) to reframe the health challenges faced by delivery workers, arguing that critical barrier is not the absence of medical facilities but the lack of communicative capability to access and use them. Within the CA, resources are only meaningful when individuals can convert them into valued functionings. For delivery workers, constraints such as time poverty, lack of paid leave, and informational asymmetries weaken this conversion process. We argue that health communication must be understood as a capability that directly enlarges workers substantive freedoms by equipping them with the knowledge, confidence, and navigational skills needed to make informed health choices. Health communication thereby turns access into utilization, and utilization into well-being. Health communication operates both as a valued function of being informed and able to engage with health systems and as an instrumental freedom that enhances the conversion of existing resources into achieved health outcomes. Recognizing health communication as a capability reshapes policy debates, highlighting the need to invest in service provision and communicative infrastructures that expand workers agency and real opportunities for well-being. 2025 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Source

Howard Journal of Communications;

Date

01-01-2025

Publisher

Routledge

Subject

Agency; capability approach; delivery-platform workers; gig economy; health communication

Coverage

Kalbalia P., Department of Media Studies, School of Arts and Humanities, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, India; Koushik K., Department of Media Studies, School of Arts and Humanities, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, India

Rights

Restricted Access; Hardcopy may be available in the library

Relation

ISSN: 10646175;

Format

online

Language

English

Type

Article

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1080/10646175.2025.2570753

https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105018816219?origin=resultslist