Health Communication Commons^™

Enhancing Recovery With The Use Of Animals, Christina Martinez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Avenues is a program designed to help adults lead happier and more productive lives by overcoming mental health and chemical dependency challenges. The problem is, participants are not fully prepared for independent living following these programs. The plan was to provide participants a therapeutic approach to gaining hands-on experience while combating symptoms of mental illness with the use of animals, with hopes that participants would be better prepared for life after leaving the program. If the project met the expected outcome, the agency would see a lower rate of participants returning to the program and a higher success rate of …

How Does Parents’ Social Support Impact Children’S Health Practice? Examining A Mediating Role Of Health Knowledge, Paulin Tay Straughan, Chengwei Xu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Background: Family environmental factors play a vital role in shaping children’s health practices (e.g., obesity prevention). It is still unclear how parents’ social support affects children’s obesity-related health practices. The present study argues that whether parents’ social support positively associates with children’s obesity-related health practice depends on if it could promote parents’ obesity-related health knowledge. Thus, we hypothesize that health knowledge mediates the relationship between parents’ social support and children’s health practice regarding weight management. Methods: To test the hypothesis, we conducted a questionnaire survey and collected a nationally representative sample of 1488 household responses in Singapore. The survey included …

Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This activity seeks to explain to undergraduate students how to craft a proper attack and defense in argumentation and debate, persuasion, or political communication courses. The activity teaches students 1) the parts of a basic argument structure and 2) how to construct a rebuttal using a basic argument structure. Students will argue against their true political typology by selecting an opposing typology from the Pew Research Typology Quiz. Broadly, this exercise is designed to encourage students to engage in dialogues with people who disagree with their political positionality. Specifically, the activity accomplishes this by teaching students the value of basic …

Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Drawing objects and concepts, such as cats, trees, love, democracy, and family, is probably the last activity students expect to do in a communication course. Although this sounds like an introductory art activity, creating visual representations provides a nuanced understanding of the encoding and decoding processes. Encoding and decoding are the most hidden and often the most unfamiliar and complex fundamental components of communication for students to comprehend. By engaging in this activity, students translate their decoding process into drawings, which serve as personal artifacts representative of their encoding and decoding. Students come to better conceptualize this cognitive process with …

“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

This activity demonstrates communication competence and allows students to observe, assess, and ultimately utilize the model of communication competence to engage with other people successfully. To understand how to engage in communication competence, students must recognize that appropriateness and effectiveness are crucial aspects of their communication. Through the communication competence model, students examine how to achieve effectiveness in their communication by setting goals for specific contexts; they also consider to what extent their goals are achievable given the particular situation. Using a 2014 MTV Video Music Award example, students can analyze why Miley Cyrus allowed a homeless man to accept …

Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

Despite numerous quantitative assessments of teaching interventions that have helped mitigate public speaking anxiety (PSA), this common barrier to public speaking persists. In addition, quantitative measures may not be appropriate for all instructional goals, especially with students from across a variety of cultures. To enrich educators’ capacity to help diverse bodies of students overcome the challenges presented by PSA, this qualitative study asked students to “Please describe yourself as a public speaker” at the beginning and the end of a freshman-level, general education public speaking class. Thematic analysis identified a two-dimensional pattern within student responses (N = 51) (a …

Front Matter

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

No abstract provided.

Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

No abstract provided.

Pulmonary Specialist-Supported Health Coaching Delivered By Lay Personnel Improves Receipt Of Quality Care For Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Rachel Willard-Grace, Danielle Hessler, Beatrice Huang, Denise Devore, Chris Chirinos, Jessica Wolf, Devon Low, Chris Garvey, Doranne Donesky, Stephanie Tsao, David H. Thom, George Su

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose: Half of people living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) do not receive high-quality, evidenced-based care as described in international guidelines. We conducted secondary data analysis of a previously published study to assess the ability of a model of lay health coaching to improve provision of guideline-based care in a primary care setting.

Methods: As part of a randomized controlled trial, we recruited English- and Spanish-speaking patients with moderate to severe COPD from primary care clinics serving a low-income, predominantly African American population. Participants were randomized to receive usual care or 9 months of health coaching from primary care …

Medical Tourism & Communication, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

Medical tourism (MT), sometimes referred to as health tourism or medical travel, involves both the treatment of illness and the facilitation of wellness, with travel. Medical tourism is a multifaceted and multiphase process involving many agents and actors that requires careful planning and execution. The coordinated process involves the biomedical, transportation, tourism, and leisure industries. From the communication perspective, the process can be viewed as a 5-stage model consisting of the: (a) orientation, (b) preparation, (c) experiential and treatment, (d) convalescence, and (e) reflection phases. Medical tourism is uniquely situated in a nexus of academic literature related to communication, business …

“You Are The Key”: A Co-Design Project To Reduce Disparities In Black Veterans’ Communication With Healthcare Providers, Anna M. Barker, Renda S. Wiener, Dave Crocker, Makayla Dones, Oluwabunmi Emidio, Abigail N. Herbst, Jenesse Kaitz, Lauren Kearney, Danielle Miano, Gemmae M. Fix

Patient Experience Journal

Interventions are needed to overcome a key barrier to patient-provider communication, namely that patients hesitate to participate in clinical conversations because they believe their expected role is to be passive. This expectation is reinforced for veterans, who replicate their experience of military hierarchy in the patient-provider relationship. Black veterans, moreover, encounter structural racism that compounds this power imbalance. This paper describes a co-designed intervention to empower Black veterans to talk with providers, using shared decision-making (SDM) for lung cancer screening (LCS) as an exemplar. We worked with a diverse group of 5 veterans to develop materials that normalize participating in …

Breaking The Transactional Mindset: A New Path For Healthcare Leadership Built On A Commitment To Human Experience, Kirsten Krull, Jerry Mansfield, Jennifer Gentry, Karen Grimley, Barbara Jacobs, Jason Wolf

Patient Experience Journal

Numerous health care publications have focused on the compelling need to improve patient experience and the associated improvements necessary to address workforce well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated and illuminated long-standing problems in health care including workforce shortages, inequity in health care delivery outcomes, care provider burnout, and overall societal structural racism.^1,2 The Beryl Institute’s Nursing Executive Council (NEC) manuscript Rebuilding a Foundation of Trust: A Call to Action in Creating a Safe Environment for Everyone³ focused on actions and behaviours to heal relationships and build trust between care providers and leaders with commitments to safety, empathy, shared decision …

"Talk To Your Doctor:" A Rhetorical Analysis Of Burkean Identification In Direct-To-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertisements, Sophia N. Bates, Valerie Lynn Schrader

Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal

In this article, we use rhetorical criticism as a research method to apply Burkean identification to four direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical television commercials, suggesting that the commercials create a state of consubstantiality with the audience. The identification strategies of common ground, the assumed “we” through the use of the word “you,” and dissociation are utilized in these commercials to inspire consumers to initiate a conversation with their doctor about their healthcare needs. Based on the success direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisements have had with inspiring patients to engage in a dialogue with healthcare providers, Burkean identification could have significant implications when used in other …

Learning From Death: Health Education Considerations For Medical Tourists, Caregiving Companions, And Medical Tourism Providers, Alicia Mason, Sakshi Bhati, Ran Jiang, Elizabeth Spencer

Faculty Submissions

Medical tourism is a process in which a consumer travels from one’s health jurisdiction to receive biomedical treatments or services, thus becoming a patient. This chapter explores how global media frame cases of patient death associated with the medical tourism (MT) process between 2009-2019. A qualitative content analysis of 50 patient mortality cases found that (1) a majority of media representations of medical tourism patient death are of middle-class, minority females between 25-55 years of age seeking cosmetic surgery internationally; (2) sudden death, grief, and bereavement counseling is noticeably absent from medical tourism providers (MTPs); and (3) the acknowledgement of …

Public Communication Of Science: The Experience Of The Rio Grande Valley Alzheimer’S Disease Resource Center For Minority Aging Research, Amanda J. Guerrero, Rosa V. Pirela, Gladys E. Maestre

Research Colloquium

Introduction: There are multiple models of public communication of science. Some models focus on communication within the science community, while others involve public participation. At the Rio Grande Valley AD-RCMAR, we hope to implement a public outreach program to aid in the dissemination of accurate information regarding Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

Objective: The purpose of this project was to identify behavioral change models that will allow the RGV AD-RCMAR to increase awareness and engagement of brain aging, including Alzheimer’s disease, within the Rio Grande Valley.

Methods: A literature review was conducted to identify models of behavioral change that will …

Outbreak Communication: Exploring The Relationships Between Health Information Seeking Behaviors, Vested Interests, And Covid-19 Knowledge In U.S. Midwest Populations, Alicia Mason, Josh Compton, Elizabeth Spencer, Kaitlin Barnett

Faculty Submissions

On February 15, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director, General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated at a Munich Security Conference, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” (Zarocostas, 2020, p. 676). The term ‘infodemic’ refers to the onslaught of both accurate and inaccurate health information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of an ‘infodemic’ was quickly integrated into mass media, popular culture (i.e., documentaries, podcasts), and eventually scholarly literature. In response to COVID-19, health communication scholars have centered on understanding specific messaging strategies such as the use of fear appeals (Stolow et al., 2020), nature of advertising …

Comparing Ways To Ask Patients About Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity In The Emergency Department (Ed), Reach Dissemination Committee, Maine, Usa

REACH: Research Evidence-to-Action for Community Health

Sexual and gender minority patients report higher satisfaction and comfort with ED encounters when SO/GI is collected along with other demographic information via a nonverbal, written method during patient registration.

The Pornography Industry's Disinformation Campaign On Addiction Recovery Resources, Darryl Mead

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

As pornography became increasingly popular online, many unsuspecting consumers reported adverse effects. These included sexual dysfunctions, such as lack of response with real partners, delayed ejaculation, erectile difficulties, and sexual compulsivity. Some pornography consumers began congregating in online self-help portals (forums and websites) to assist one another in quitting or reducing problematic pornography use. The popularity of the self-help resources and their potential to dampen the profits of a lucrative industry resulted in disinformation campaigns run by individuals connected to the pornography industry. In this article, I examine how a paper containing significant inaccuracies about the people organising the online …

How Risk Perceptions And Level Of Trust Of Information Influence Individuals’ Health Services Usage, Wan-Lin Chang

Research Symposium

Background: When facing health-related issues, decision-making is not an easy thing. Some people look for advice from health care professionals, and some people trust their family members' and friends’ experiences more. Previous studies in health communication have suggested differences across various demographic groups in information seeking access and skills, including variables related to the knowledge gap assumption and individuals' risk perceptions.

Methods: Multiple linear regression and logistic regression are used to examine how individuals’ health risk perceptions influence their health service usage by analyzing the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 5 Cycle 4. HINTS conducts national surveys to monitor …

Non-Prescribed Pain Reliever Trends From 2011-2020 And Their Effects On Uninsured Americans’ Mental Health, Samantha M. Guajardo, Wan-Lin Chang

Research Symposium

Background: In 2019, it was reported by the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) that 10.1 million Americans misuse pain relievers, and of those individuals, 50.8% were not prescribed by a health care provider. The same report also indicates that there is a direct correlation between substance use and mental health disorders (NSDUH, 2019). In 2020, the NSDUH reported that 49.5% of Americans do not receive mental health treatment for their substance use disorder. Of that percentage, 30.4% did not receive treatment for health insurance reasons. According to the CDC, 31.6 million Americans reported not being insured in …