Health Communication Commons^™

Reducing Turnaround Time From Pathology Collection To Patient Awareness In Gastroenterology Practice, Adrianna Hyams

DNP Scholarly Projects

Background: Means of improving the turnaround time from specimen completion to the patient being notified of results are not well known or researched. The aim of this study is to decrease the turnaround time (TAT) from when the specimen is collected to the time the patient is notified from 4 weeks to 2 weeks. This quality improvement project took place in a privately owned gastroenterology office in southern Indiana.

Methods: An exhaustive literature review was completed to determine the best means of improving pathology TAT. The Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) method of quality improvement was used for this project. …

Landscape Analysis And Content Strategy For Covid-19 State Response Websites, Kaitlin Price

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

There is a massive flow of information about the COVID-19 pandemic from news coverage, daily announcements from local and national political leaders and health authorities, as well as social media. Because of this, a focus on providing clear, honest, and valid information is needed. One way to achieve this goal is through impactful state websites that can act as the main resource for COVID-19 related news.

This project will be analyzing three COVID-19 state response websites, kycovid19.ky.gov (Kentucky’s website), oregon.gov (Oregon’s website), and ldh.la.gov (Louisiana’s website) in terms of their use of website design and crisis communication strategies. I will …

Building Assets Toolkit: Developing Positive Benchmarks For Adolescent Girls—Asset Cards [Arabic], Judith Bruce, Sarah Engebretsen, Kimberly Glazer

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

[In Arabic] The Building Assets Toolkit is an approach for developing programs for specific segments of girls that will prepare them to better face the challenges of growing up. It will help program managers understand the needs of the girls in their community, engage stakeholders at different levels and with different viewpoints, and build concrete and meaningful programming for adolescent girls.

This document contains the Building Assets Toolkit’s Asset Cards (110), set of Age Cards (age 6 to 20), and Program Planning Worksheet (sample provided). The Age Cards are to be printed out and placed according to the instructions. The …

Toward Improving Physician/Patient Communication Regarding Invisible Chronic Illness (Ici): The Potential Of Mhealth Technology In Instructional Communication, Jami Leigh Warren, Karen Clancy, Christy F. Brady, Kendall Rump, Tayla New-Oglesby

Health and Clinical Sciences Faculty Publications

Patients that suffer from invisible chronic illness (ICI) such as autoimmune conditions, neurological conditions, and gastrointestinal problems often struggle to obtain a proper medical diagnosis due to a lack of objective indicators to help health-care providers diagnose patients with ICIs. Thus, researchers conducted interviews with 21 participants with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) to determine what messages they received from health-care providers as they pursued a diagnosis, how they interpreted those messages, and what role mHealth technology may play in improving patient/provider communication and effective diagnosis/treatment of ICIs. Several themes regarding potential instructional communication intervention content emerged from the interview …

Is Care In The Air?: A Crisis Ethics Case Study Of American Airlines’ Communication During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Lily V. Hicks

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research proposes a qualitative case study of American Airlines’ communication during the first month of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Data from the airline’s press releases along with its tweets and a sample of organizational responses to those tweets are offered for proposed analysis using the lenses of Situational Crisis Communication Theory, the Applied Model of Care Considerations, and the body of crisis literature on audience coping and emotions during crises. This in-depth look at a unique communication phenomenon will be a fundamental step in examining how airline communication exhibits ethics or lack thereof and is related to people’s emotions …

Mental Health Consequences Of Covid-19 Media Coverage: The Need For Effective Crisis Communication Practices, Zhaohui Su, Dean Mcdonnell, Jun Wen, Metin Kozak, Jaffar Abbas, Sabina Šegalo, Xiaoshan Li, Junaid Ahmad, Ali Cheshmehzangi, Yuyang Cai, Ling Yang, Yu Tao Xiang

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2021, The Author(s). During global pandemics, such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), crisis communication is indispensable in dispelling fears, uncertainty, and unifying individuals worldwide in a collective fight against health threats. Inadequate crisis communication can bring dire personal and economic consequences. Mounting research shows that seemingly endless newsfeeds related to COVID-19 infection and death rates could considerably increase the risk of mental health problems. Unfortunately, media reports that include infodemics regarding the influence of COVID-19 on mental health may be a source of the adverse psychological effects on individuals. Owing partially to insufficient crisis communication practices, media and news …

Communications In The Time Of A Pandemic: The Readability Of Documents For Public Consumption, Catherine Ferguson, Margaret Merga, Stephen Winn

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2021 The Authors Objective: Government communications in a crisis can influence public health outcomes. This research aimed to investigate if written communications of the most commonly sought sources of COVID-19 information available on the internet have readability levels commensurate with those of the general public. Methods: Online documents from the World Health Organization (WHO), and the governments of Australia, the UK and the US were assessed for readability using an online instrument that calculated scores for the Flesch Reading Ease Score, the SMOG Index and the Readability Consensus Grade Level. Results: Similar to the previous research, most documents assessed …

Telehealth During Covid-19: A Look At Healthcare Providers’ Experiences, Sabrina Webb

Honors Program Theses

Healthcare providers were placed under considerable strain during the COVID-19 pandemic. To exacerbate matters more, a sudden shift to telehealth became necessary to provide safe provider-patient visits. The increased strain created by the sudden need to implement a telehealth protocol is believed to have decreased workplace satisfaction. This study aims to investigate how the rapid shift to telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic affected healthcare providers’ workplace satisfaction, how virtual visits created challenges and opportunities for provider-patient communication, and how the use of telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic affected healthcare providers’ capacity to engage in patient-centered communication. For this study, 15 …

A Silent Struggle: Eating Disorders In College, Grace P. Olechowski

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

Living Together In Precarious Times: Covid-19 In The Philippines, Gideon Lasco

Development Studies Faculty Publications

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the necessity—for social scientists and the rest of the public alike—of an ecological; non-anthropocentric view of the world as humans grapple with microbes; surround themselves with plants; and engage with non-human animals in ways that range from abuse to affection. This chapter uses this multispecies perspective to reflect on the Philippine experience of COVID-19; offering illustrative examples; sketching tentative insights; and concluding with a research agenda for future work.

Health Literacy Of University Students In Covid-19 Pandemic And Infodemic: A Pakistani Perspective, Rozeen Shaukat, Muhammad Asif Naveed

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This research investigated the levels of health literacy among Pakistani university students in the Covid-19 pandemic and infodemic. The university students were surveyed using an online questionnaire at two public sector universities and one private sector university in Punjab-Pakistan. The administration of the data collection instrument was completed with permission from concerned authorities. A total of 374 responses received which were imported to SPSS and analyzed by applying descriptive as well as inferential statistics. The results revealed that the health literacy of university students in the Covid-19 pandemic and infodemic was not at an optimal level as these participants expressed …

Opportunities And Challenges Of Consumer Health Information On The Internet: Is Cyberchondria An Emerging Challenge?, Amirreza Kalantari, Saeideh Valizadeh-Haghi, Azam Shahbodaghi, Farid Zayeri

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Introduction: With the advent of the Internet, retrieval and searching of information resources have changed compared to the past. These changes have made the Internet network easy enough for users to access specialized and non-specialized knowledge, and consequently, expose users to many challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, this study investigates and categorize these challenges and opportunities.

Methods: To conduct this narrative review, at the first step, the articles addressed health-related information available on the Internet from reputable journals and databases were selected. Then, the selected articles were examined to answer the research questions, and the information obtained was categorized. Finally, the …

Social Media Self-Regulation And The Rise Of Vaccine Misinformation, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the main characteristics and shortcomings of mainstream social media responses to vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Parts I and II contextualize the recent expansion of vaccine information and disinformation in the online environment. Part III provides a survey and taxonomy of ongoing responses to vaccine misinformation adopted by mainstream social media. It further notes the limitations of current self-regulatory modes and illustrates these limitations by presenting a short case study on Facebook—the largest social media vehicle for vaccine-specific misinformation, currently estimated to harbor approximately half of the social media accounts linked to vaccine misinformation. Part IV examines potential …

Comics For Pediatric Oncology Patients And Families: Education And Empowerment, Natalie Johns

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The major objective is to develop the first book of a boxed set series of comic vignettes that will serve as a clinical educational tool for pediatric patients with a recent cancer diagnosis and their caregivers. These comics are hypothesized to improve patient and family understanding of the disease, its treatment, side effects, and outcomes in an engaging and aesthetically pleasing way. The overall goals of this project are to reduce anxiety and increase health literacy in patients and their families while assisting the oncology team in providing optimal medical care, thus improving the overall quality of treatment. Comics aimed …

A Short Film That Addresses Substance Use Disorders In Rural Communities And Strategies In Prevention And Treatment Of Addiction, Sarah R. Poteracki

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research paper and accompanying video (link to the short film is here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1etDnUmEvkOds8J0EKnq1gnFO79-GggjY) offer insight into the current state of research collaboration surrounding substance use disorders in West Virginia. This professional project explores the importance of collaboration both in a research and clinical setting and in the social realm. The film was shown at the 2nd annual meeting for the Appalachian Node of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network on February 25, 2021. I interviewed 14 researchers and experts from a diverse range of disciplines who shared insights and strategies in the prevention and treatment of …

Framing Inclusion: The Media Treatment Of Irregular Immigrants' Right To Health Care In Spain, Alisa Petroff, Anahí Viladrich, Sònia Parella

Publications and Research

With the passing of Royal Decree-Law 16/2012, Spain’s national health system switched from a model defined by universal and free health care principles, to a private insurance system that excluded large population groups. Based on a qualitative research design, this paper examines the media treatment of undocumented immigrants’ prerogatives to public health care in Spain (2012–2018). The analysis of 234 articles, drawn from three major Spanish newspapers, reveals three frames that underscore the media’s "rhetorics of inclusion," which argue for the extension of free medical services to irregular immigrants a topic traditionally underestimated by the literature. The moralist frame, supported …

Risk Communication And Covid-19: An Exploration Of Best Practices, Allie Martens

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study is to determine if the risk communication strategies the State of Minnesota applied in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic align with the best practices described in the research. The method used to conduct this research was a content analysis. Upon conducting a content analysis, various best practice criteria were categorized based on similar themes. The analysis portion of this research consisted of analyzing various Minnesota Department of Health case documents to determine if their risk communication strategies aligned with the best practices described in the research. The findings concluded that the risk communication strategies …

Visual Infrastructures Of Covid-19 Messaging, Julia Ross, Claudine Jaenichen

Art Faculty Articles and Research

Infecting more than two hundred and nineteen million people internationally as of September 2021, SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19) remains a major health crisis despite the availability of vaccines in many countries and publicized guidance on effective preventative measures (WHO, 2021). To combat the spread of the virus, governments worldwide have found themselves relying on their ability to exert control over health behaviors in public and private spaces. Visual communication, which includes both graphics and text, is an integral component of how these behavioral advisories are communicated to the public. Authorities translate scientific information into digestible designs for the public to achieve effective …

Black Outside: A Film Exploring Black People’S Relationships With Outdoor Spaces, Zoie Bills

Senior Independent Study Theses

Spending time in nature is regarded as a great way to have fun and improve one’s mental or physical health. Black people are largely underrepresented in public parks and other outdoor spaces. My film explores the lack of Black presence in outdoor spaces in an effort to promote Black people’s usage of these places. I used interviews with students, environmental activists, and my own family in order to explore the scholarly, structural, cultural, and personal factors that impact Black folks’ engagement with the outdoors. The interviews revealed several major takeaways including that Black people have historical roots in outdoor spaces …

Combating Covid-19 Infodemic In Nigerian Rural Communities: The Imperatives Of Traditional Communication Systems, Joseph M. Lucas, Tordue Simon Targema, Abubakar Jibril, Elkanah Obadiah Sambo, Bako Ali Istifanus

ASEAN Journal of Community Engagement

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019, substantial attention has been devoted to combating the infodemic that has come to characterize it with the potential to prevent its effective containment. This is undoubtedly a very difficult task, especially in Nigerian rural communities that are characterized by severe lack of the requisite facilities to access information on modern media platforms, compounded by high illiteracy and poverty rates. This study presents a case for the utilization of people-oriented, traditional communication systems in combatting the infodemic at the grassroots level. It contends that, given the peculiarities of the country’s rural settlements, traditional …