Grady doctoral student receives esteemed Inez Kaiser Award for health communication research

Fourth-year doctoral student, Yen-I Lee was recently selected as one of three recipients of the prestigious Inez Kaiser Graduate Student of Color Award. This award is given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in honor of Inez Kaiser, the first African-American woman to be a member of the Public Relations Society of America. Lee received the award for her research in strategic health communication.

The PRSA Foundation funds this award given by the AEJMC to encourage diversity within the field of public relations. Lee’s achievement is particularly exceptional as there was a large pool of applicants this year. Lee will be honored on Aug. 10 at the AEJMC Conference in Chicago.

Lee has conducted extensive research at Grady and been a part of many different research efforts, however she is especially keen on researching specific topics regarding health public relations, the strategic use of technology, and cultural psychology in health risk and crisis message design.

Her vast research on these subjects have included projects investigating cancer risk perception, advertising and health product brands on Facebook and scale development of health crisis information seeking and sharing. She also has designed and led several of her own research projects, one researching health-related Facebook content and another examining the effectiveness of flu vaccination PSAs.

Lee is an instructor at Grady College. She has taught as a lab instructor for the social media analytics class and will be teaching a public relations research class this upcoming fall.

Lee is honored to have received the award and says that it has encouraged her to continue in her research.

“I would like to thank Grady College for being supportive of students,” she said. “I also would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Yan Jin, and professors who support and guide me regarding my research interests, so I can continue to make quality contributions to the Grady College.”

For more about Lee’s research, visit https://grady.uga.edu/faculty/lee-yen-i/.