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Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (55)
This chapter recognizes the critical turn in studies of public relations women, expected to lead rather than manage the practice, as women are the majority of practitioners across the globe. A brief history of challenges to women seeking public relations management positions then describes the research on women’s barriers to leadership in public re...
Chinese women are among the most frequent users of fitness technology, and yet the least likely to adhere to a fitness regimen. Little research has been done on preference, use, and perceptions of mobile health tools. Research, however, has shown that women’s adherence to fitness technology has been low, and that relationship management theory migh...
Roughly one in five U.S. children live in rural areas and they are more likely than nonrural children to experience chronic illnesses, unfulfilled medical needs, and poverty – yet health literacy intervention research for rural children is lacking. Thus, this study explores a health literacy intervention in two rural public elementary schools that...
BACKGROUND
Limited research has addressed the effects of health literacy interventions in elementary schools. However, school‐aged children's health literacy is critical because children make decisions about their health every day. The purpose of the pilot project was to explore the feasibility of integrated health literacy lesson plans for second...
Patient-provider relationships can either impede or encourage patient utilization of healthcare services and adherence to treatment. Given the significant health disparities found among low-income African Americans, it is imperative to understand this population’s experiences with healthcare providers and how to improve their patient-provider relat...
Health literacy (HL) has been well-studied in adults; however, the literature on HL in children and adolescents has only recently burgeoned. Many authors argue child and adolescent HL is unique from adult HL and should be independently measured (Bröder et al., 2017; Guo et al., 2018; Okan et al., 2018; Ormshaw, Paakkari, & Kannas, 2013; Rothman et...
Schools are a recommended place for childhood obesity prevention. Local Wellness Policies (LWPs) establish guidelines for schools to provide opportunities for students to access nutritious foods and be physically active. Little is known about the impact of LWPs, when implemented, on students' behavior and body mass index (BMI). The Wellness Champio...
Background
Although Hispanic women have the highest cervical cancer incidence rate, African American women account for a disproportionate burden of cervical cancer incidence and mortality when compared with non-Hispanic white women. Given that religion occupies an essential place in African American lives, delivering health messages through a popul...
This chapter marks the territory and leadership potential found in research, practice and policy related to the role of health literacy in higher education and professional training. There is limited published work that has summarized the role and scope of health literacy in higher education and professional training. This chapter will provide a re...
This chapter marks the territory and leadership potential found in research, practice and policy related to the role of health literacy in higher education and professional training. There is limited published work that has summarized the role and scope of health literacy in higher education and professional training. This chapter will provide a re...
Analyzing children’s conceptualizations of health and body and health literacy will significantly add understanding to how problematic health attitudes and behaviors may take root (Driessnack, Chung, Perkhounkova, & Hein, 2014). The knowledge gained from such an assessment can be applied towards communication contexts that aim to promote children’s...
ABSTRACTInfant mortality is associated with access to healthcare, knowledge, and health literacy. Text4baby, the largest national texting health initiative, seeks to address these factors. However, no research has examined the program?s theoretical framework, an aspect that may impact its success. To address this gap, Text4baby?s use of theory was...
There has been growing national concern over the low health literacy of Americans and, coinciding with this, a growing importance placed on measuring health literacy. Health literacy is the ability to access, understand, and use information to make health decisions. Health literacy in an oral health context means access to accurate information abou...
While national concern is growing, the scholarly body of knowledge in health literacy is still relatively small in health communication literature. The field began to distinguish itself as an outgrowth of adult literacy that focused on patient understanding of health information. It grew out of medicine and public health science mostly, and still t...
Objectives:
To introduce a multi-site assessment of oral health literacy and to describe preliminary analyses of the relationships between health literacy and selected oral health outcomes within the context of a comprehensive conceptual model.
Methods:
Data for this analysis came from the Multi-Site Oral Health Literacy Research Study (MOHLRS),...
Approximately 85% of people living in rural settings own a cell phone, and of those, 76% send or receive text messages. Thus, text messaging may be an effective way to reach rural low-income mothers with important information and resources that will improve their health and well-being. This exploratory study examined the utility of using text messa...
This study examines cross-border collaboration among community-based organizations, health departments and practitioners in a city and neighboring county that provide HIV prevention services. Relationship management theory was used to assess trust, reciprocity, control mutuality, commitment, satisfaction, mutual understanding and mutual legitimacy...
Rural, low-income mothers face challenges to their health equal to or greater than those of low-income mothers from urban areas. This study put health message design in to the hands of low-income rural mothers. The current study filled a research gap by analyzing a participatory process used to design health messages tailored to the everyday lives...
The Health Enterprise Zone (HEZ) aims to improve health outcomes in zip code 20743 by developing and promoting five Patient Centered Medical Homes (PCMH). Capitol Heights, Maryland (zip code 20743) suffers disproportionately from high rates of low birth weight, poverty crime, late/no prenatal care, and teen birth, when compared to the rest of the C...
Only limited research has been published about women as an audience of health messages in the media. Furthermore, most of the well-known health communication theories have not effectively addressed the sociocultural and political environments that construct the medical/health industry and the media, which impact the everyday lives of women and thei...
Research over the years using Grunig's situational theory has identified hot-issue publics along with active, aware, latent, and nonpublics. Hot-issue publics typically communicate actively only about a single problem that involves nearly everyone in the population and that has received extensive media coverage. Hot-issue publics tend to emerge whe...
Rural mothers and their children experience poor oral health. They also experience low levels of health literacy. Tooth decay, the number one oral health disease, can be prevented when mothers understand the importance of drinking water and using toothpaste with fluoride. Unknown is how to effectively frame oral health prevention messages that coul...
Group health talks were conducted in Ekiadolor, Southern Nigeria, to improve male attitudes and practices regarding their involvement in prenatal care and family planning. Intervention planners highlight the importance of embedding local cultural norms along with co-opting gendered beliefs for purposes of planning and implementing the group talks....
The study explored whether perceived shared experience with a media portrayal could influence various cognitions—such as concern, sense of personal involvement, and desire to learn more—that are important for behavior change. This research used the situational theory of publics in order to evaluate whether perceived shared risk is an antecedent to...
Responses from 869 public relations practitioners were examined to see how female and male practitioners perceive and enact power-influence in public relations, including perceptions of power-influence, resources, preferred influence tactics, constraints on power, persuasive appeals, and what it means to “do the right thing” in public relations. Ma...
This study employed qualitative, in-depth focus groups with women to determine their perceptions of contradictory information portrayed in media about fish consumption safety. The women's perceptions were understood in terms of how much they recognized eating fish to be a problem, how personally relevant the problem of eating fish was for them, and...
This study examined how work-life balance is perceived by male and female public relations professionals. Eight focus groups were conducted. Findings revealed a fluid and complex work-personal continuum affected by such factors as societal norms; organizational contradictions; new technology; professional identity; and parenthood. Practitioners exp...
This study integrated the situational theory of publics with theories in risk communication to explore reactions to simulated media coverage of food terrorism. Focus group participants, given news scenarios about a terrorist threat on a U.S. food product, discussed problem recognition, level of involvement, constraint recognition, fear, risk, and s...
This article advances a feminist paradigm for public relations scholarship by (re)conceptualizing the concepts of gender, power, and diversity as discursive practices that construct the meaning of public relations. These three concepts are then applied to the body of work on organization-public relationships. The article posits that the current fem...
Communication research and theory can increase the impact of campaigns in the field of injury prevention.
This study used a quantitative survey and qualitative focus groups to examine perceptions of leadership styles, sex differences in these perceptions, and opinions about the gendered nature of leadership in public relations. In summary, the focus group data supported survey results that indicated a strong preference for transformational leadership s...
The impact of feminist scholarship on public relations affects practitioners, scholars, and audiences alike. Since the first comprehensive gender study in public relations was published in 1986, numerous scholars have (a) described the status of women in the profession, (b) applied feminist perspectives to prevailing public relations theories, and...
This article illustrates through literature and original research a beginning theory that explains the enduring gender discrepancies in what has become a gendered field, that of public relations. A survey of public relations practitioners reveals statistically significant gender differences in hiring perceptions, salary and salary perceptions, and...
Focus groups and interviews were held with women from various ethnic, class, educational, and sexual backgrounds to explore antecedent factors that may characterize involvement, a key variable in the situational theory of publics. Findings revealed that a consciousness of everyday life, source preference, self-identity, a consciousness of personal...
This chapter describes directions for feminist scholarship in communication today, what these directions mean for the state of the art in feminist scholarship, and how research can be advanced to expand the understanding of feminism and communication. Nine streams of research are highlighted: historical and prediction essays, methodological and epi...
This was an exploratory, pilot content analysis of master’s degree programs in public relations found on the World Wide Web that describes the status of public relations graduate curricula. By using recommendations of the Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education as a benchmark, we examined general requirements, core public relations c...
Examines from three perspectives (that of students, clients, and professors) the strengths and weaknesses of using actual clients in student projects for undergraduate public relations campaigns courses. Finds: students appreciated using actual clients; teachers felt the extra effort was worthwhile; and clients valued their experiences working with...
This study used feminist scholarship to explore leadership in female public relations practitioners and educators. Interviews with 10 women helped illustrate their communication styles, motivations, and meanings for leadership. These women's voices deserve attention due to the concerns about the growing percentage of women entering the field. Resul...
Public relations is important to organizations because this function has boundary spanning roles and responsibilities. Public relations practitioners work between the organization and various publics to communicate messages in an effort to inform and influence the organization's leadership and dominant coalition and to inform and effect change amon...
This is a feminist, cultural interpretation analysis that explored how women from different backgrounds made meaning of mass media health messages. Hall's encoding- decoding model and Grunig's situational theory of publics serve as context for this study. Four research questions are answered through focus groups and in-depth interviews: (1) What ar...
