Focus: Health and Risk Communication

The ability to effectively and efficiently communicate about health and risk-related issues is becoming increasingly important. Hospitals, government agencies, health departments, news media organizations and public relations and other communication practitioners need to know how best to reach diverse audiences with timely and relevant messages, and the new Grady Center for Health and Risk Communication (CHRC) is an important interdisciplinary center of expertise.

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Protest Paradigm Alignment Discrepancies Between a Mask Mandate Protest and a Black Lives Matter Protest

Morgan Gonzales (Grady MA student) Abstract: Three people were arrested during a Black Lives Matter march in September of 2020. A day later, a mask mandate protest doubling as a psalm sing also led to the arrests of three people. Despite the similarities between the two demonstrations, local and national news coverage of the two […]

Computer-tailored Intervention Increases Colorectal Cancer Screening Among Low-Income African Americans in Primary Care: Results of a Randomized Trial Jeff Springston

Abstract: Background: African Americans have the highest colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence and mortality rates of any racial/ethnic group and screening rates remain well below the National Colorectal Cancer rountable screening goal of 80%. Purpose: This randomized trial compared the efficacy of two clinic-based interventions for increasing CRC screening among African American primary care patients. Conclusions: […]

Exploring the Role of Social Support in Promoting Patient Participation in Health Care among Women with Breast Cancer Jeong-Yeob Han

Abstract: Scholars have adopted Street’s (2003) ecological model of communication in medical encounters to investigate the factors promoting patient participation in health care. However, factors demonstrated in the ecological model were bounded in the context of medical care primarily focusing on health care providers and patients. Social factors, such as patients’ relationships and supportive communication […]

Effects of Facebook Comments on Attitude Toward Vaccines: The Roles of Perceived Distributions of Public Opinion and Perceived Vaccine Efficacy Hanyoung Kim, Jeong-Yeob Han & Youngji Seo

Abstract: This study investigated if and how exposure to Facebook comments about vaccines influences one’s attitude toward the vaccines. In this investigation, comments were examined in light of their effect on attitude toward vaccines through perceived distribution of public opinion on vaccines, and perceived vaccine efficacy was tested as a factor moderating relative effects of […]

Infectious Disease Risk (IDR) Perception and Prospective Tourists’ Travel Intention to a Mega-sport Event Host Country: The Mediating Role of Risk Information Seeking Yan Jin and DongWon Choi

Abstract: While risk perception has been the subject of many sport tourism studies, much remains to be linked with risk information seeking, travel-related response, and behavior in the sport tourism contexts. Previous studies lacked evidence-based literature to examine the effect of risk perception on travel decisions in the case of risks associated with infectious diseases […]

Uncovering layers in health risk communication: The roles of risk tolerance, message fatigue, and trust Yan Jin and Youngji Seo

Abstract: One of the understudied topics in risk communication is why individuals do not follow or are resistant to recommended behaviors that optimize personal health outcomes. To understand the dimensionality of these responses, this study investigates barriers for persuasion (i.e., risk tolerance and message fatigue) and trust in government. An online survey using a representative […]

Tracing the Caring Relationships Found Within Three Virus Outbreaks: A Public Health Communications Perspective Yan Jin

Abstract: The world is subject to many an affliction and pandemic, as seen most recently with COVID-19. This study, in an attempt to better understand the trends and workings of the past, conducted deep-dive narrative and trend analyses of three prominent virus afflictions: the 1918 Flu, Polio, and HIV/AIDs. Through the lens of public health […]

Do Young Adults Attend to Health Warnings in the First IQOS Advertisement in the U.S.? An Eye-Tracking Approach Glen Nowak and Joe Phua

Abstract: Introduction: In October 2019, a heated tobacco product (HTP) IQOS debuted in the United States. This study examined young adults’ attention and cognitions in response to an IQOS ad that carried two mandated textual health warnings (Surgeon General’s warning and nicotine warning), and how their vaping and smoking status may interact with attention patterns […]

Organizational Threat Appraisal by Publics: The Effects of Perceived Temporal Distance on Health Crisis Outcomes

Sungsu Kim (Grady PhD Alum) and Yan Jin (Forthcoming). “Organizational Threat Appraisal by Publics: The Effects of Perceived Temporal Distance on Health Crisis Outcomes.” International Journal of Communication. Abstract: The current study advances our understanding of how organizational threat affects the way publics respond to a health crisis. To this end, we investigated the influence […]

The Infectious Disease Threat (IDT) Appraisal Model: How Perceptions of IDT Predictability and Controllability Predict Individuals’ Responses to Risks Yan Jin

Yan Jin, Irina A. Iles, Lucinda Austin, Brooke Liu, and Gregory R. Hancock (Forthcoming). “The Infectious Disease Threat (IDT) Appraisal Model: How Perceptions of IDT Predictability and Controllability Predict Individuals’ Responses to Risks.” International Journal of Strategic Communication. Abstract: Grounded in the multidisciplinary field of strategic risk and health communication, this study proposed and tested […]