Health Communication Research
- Sri Kalyanaraman, associate professor and director of the school’s media effects laboratory, is working on a grant funded by the National Institutes of Health to study how to more effectively communicate the risks of smoking to young smokers. It can be difficult to capture the attention of young smokers because many of them believe they already know all about the risks. Kalyanaraman is collaborating with researchers at Duke University seeking new ways to convey messages about the harms of smoking and determine how the communication process might be altered to make persuasive communications more effective in motivating cessation.
Assistant professor Heidi Hennink-Kaminksi is working with the National Center for Shaken Baby Syndrome on a social marketing campaign and other communication tools and strategies to help save infants’ lives by raising awareness of normal infant crying. Shaken baby syndrome is one of the leading causes of child abuse deaths in the United States. The Period of PURPLE Crying is a prevention program about the dangers of reacting in frustration to an infant’s crying, and it provides parents and caregivers with information and coping strategies. The media campaign uses a mix of radio advertising, print advertising, social media and a Web site (www.PURPLEcryingnc.info) providing research-based information written by experts in various fields of child development. The materials are designed to reach parents, caregivers and the people who influence them, such as relatives and friends. By sharing knowledge that infant crying is a normal stage of child development, The Period of PURPLE Crying hopes to save lives and reduce cases of shaking in North Carolina by 50 percent over five years.
- With an inaugural grant from the N.C. Translational and Clinical Science Institute, J-school lecturer and Ph.D. alumna Joan Cates is addressing racial and gender disparities in HPV vaccine acceptability in North Carolina. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most widespread sexually transmitted infection in the United States and can lead to several kinds of cancer and genital warts. In 2006, a vaccine was approved to protect girls from several strains of HPV that are known to cause cervical cancer, as well as several other types of cancer. In October 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the HPV vaccine to help prevent genital warts in males aged nine to 26. Previous campaigns for HPV vaccine have focused almost exclusively on the female population. Cates collaborated with then-NCCU assistant professor (and Carolina J-school alumna) LaHoma Romocki to conduct focus groups with African-American caregivers of 11- and 12-year-old boys in Sampson County, N.C. The study explored their need for information and their motivations for getting the HPV vaccine for their adolescent sons. Using the findings from their focus group research, Cates and Romocki then worked with graduate students in the Interdisciplinary Health Communication seminar taught by Knight Professor Jane Brown to develop and test campaign materials intended to raise awareness and positive perceptions of the HPV vaccine among rural African American caregivers of young boys.
