2/15/05

FROM THE EDITOR

    LAzine Issue 22, the electronic alumni magazine of Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts, centers on well-being, broadly interpreted. First, we take a look at some of our Department of Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS) faculty whose work studies the role of communication in health and health care—the function of communication in health care organizations, health promotion campaigns, and in daily provider-patient interaction.
   But we also go beyond health communication to look at some of our alumni working to either help others sustain well-being, as Roger Longenderfer does with the PinnacleHealth System, or to help them return to it, as Margaret Pepe does with the American Red Cross. Another of our stories looks at Professor Robert Schrauf's findings about pervasive negativity in our language for emotions. As well, we include a brief on Michelle Miller-Day, another faculty member in CAS, and her findings about minority perceptions of drug use.
   Finally, we thought you would like to know about a student-run program to help tsunami victims in southern Asia.
    We hope you enjoy it, and we welcome any comments you may have.


LINGUISTICS MAY BE CLUE TO EMOTIONS
By A'ndrea Elyse Messer, Penn State Science and Research News

   Words may be a clue to how people, regardless of their language, think about and process emotions, according to a Penn State researcher.

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A PITCH TO PITCH IN: STUDENTS AND TSUNAMI RELIEF

   “My name is Casey Maugh and I’m here to talk to you about a project we’re doing in Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS),” says the young woman who has just rushed up to the front of the room. “I know you were all getting out early and this won’t take long, I promise.”

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HELPING ONE, HELPING ALL

   As a physician in private practice, Roger Longenderfer ’73 anthropology had already achieved his goal of improving people’s lives. But he wanted more. He wanted to help improve aggregate lives instead of merely one at a time. And on April 19, 1995, he would have his chance.

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THE UNSEEN SIDE OF DISASTERS

   In 1972, the Pittston Coal Company, in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, dumped mine waste into Middle Fork, a branch of Buffalo Creek, creating a series of three large blockages. Days of heavy rain over the blockages caused one to break, unleashing a flood of water, pieces of rock, timbers, and coal sediment. One hundred twenty-five adults and children died and permanently disrupted the lives of the more than 4,000 survivors. Several years later, researchers found that the trauma of that event, was still devastating the community.

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MINORITY TEENS' VIEWS OF DRUG USE DIFFER FROM REALITY
By Paul Blaum, for Penn State Science and Research News

   Most young Black adolescents appear to believe that their Black peers use drugs more than White or Hispanic teens, when in reality studies show that fewer Black youth use alcohol or other drugs than do youth of other ethnic groups, a Penn State researcher says.

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WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT HEALTH:
Health Communication in Liberal Arts

   We all know how to be healthier: lower cholesterol and blood pressure, eat more fruits and vegetables, exercise 30 minutes at least three times a week.

   But who is actually communicating this information? Doctors? Television talking heads? The Internet? Your best friend who just lost twenty pounds on Atkins? Why are some messages—such as anti-smoking—more persuasive than others? And more important, why do so many of us fail to heed good health advice?

   These issues are all interrelated, says Roxanne Parrott, professor of communication arts and sciences. In fact, the way we glean our health information plays a large role in our ability to actually carry it out.

   “Yes, we all know what we’re supposed to do, but we need realistic details,” says Parrott, “We need to know how we can fit healthier behavior into our individual and busy lives—how a mother with diabetes is supposed to cook dinner for herself and her family; how a busy working parent is supposed to make time for exercise. In many cases, the way to do this is through channels of communication that lie outside of the mainstream media.”

   Those many channels of communication are the purview of a growing area of study for which Penn State’s Department of Communication Arts and Sciences is nationally recognized. According to a 2004 article by Parrott, health communication includes efforts to identify strategies for informing, influencing, and motivating individual, institutional, and public audiences about important health issues. While this might seem very general, the effects of health communication touch every one of us in various large and small—but all extremely significant—ways. How we define and understand our health and healthcare issues are shaped by a media that often leaves out critical information or is not realistic when applied to daily life. Doctors and other healthcare professionals, who should be primary sources of health information, vary widely in their abilities to communicate important messages to patients. Hence, the means and methods of getting across health messages are as important as the messages themselves.

   So what is the right approach? It depends, say the experts. In the 1990s, for example, Parrott undertook a study of farmers in south Georgia whose rate of skin cancer was higher than normal. When she asked the farmers how many of them used any protection from the sun, a little less than half said they did. Messages about the risks of skin cancer were not addressing this highly susceptible group, Parrott realized. One of the reasons was that the typical media messages emphasize sun exposure at the beach and avoiding the sun between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Farmers could not follow the latter advice and still maintain their occupation. So the researchers decided to collaborate with the local agricultural community to develop feasible solutions. The primary one? Hats.

   But not just any hat. After learning that farmers often wore free baseball caps from farm suppliers or feed and seed companies, Parrott helped develop special dark red and blue baseball caps with bandannas stitched to their backs to protect ears and necks. The colors were selected by consulting farmers to appeal to their fellow farmers.

   Better procedural information—in the form of more detailed instructions on how to apply sunscreen—was necessary as well. Many farmers said they did not use sunscreen because it would make their skin sticky and dirt and pesticides would stick to them. They did not know that the product should be applied twenty to thirty minutes before going outside. Over time, says Parrott, finding the right message and the best means of communicating it are key.

   “The field extensions agents who adopted the hats and promoted sun protection to farmers and sun safety to farming youth have proven to be the most important influencer of behavior,” she says.

   Today, Parrott applies this same participatory model to efforts to understand how we communicate about family health history and respond to media messages linking genes to health. Here, too, the effects of everyday talk about health and the habits formed from it contribute to actual communication and health behavior.

   Finding the right mode of communication was also key to Professors Michael Hecht and Michele Miller-Day’s research when they were developing an adolescent drug prevention campaign. How they determined their starting point, Hecht says, highlights the differences between a health communications campaign and a public health campaign. He cites the most famous—or infamous—drug prevention campaign as an example.

   “Like everyone else, I laughed at ‘Just Say No’ but that really wasn’t fair,” he says. “That motto emerged out of the current prevention research, which indicated that resistance and refusal skills were the best approach. What was ironic was that no one was actually studying what kids were doing.”

   So that’s just what Hecht and Miller-Day did. When they went into the schools, they interviewed kids and found that most already had their own strategies for avoiding drugs. Hecht and Miller Day took these experiences and incorporated them into a program for kids in their own words.

   “We found that there were four characteristic strategies in terms of how kids say no,” explains Hecht. “It was amazing how detailed it was: taking other routes to school to avoid pushers, what to say if a confrontation was inevitable, leaving a situation if it seemed threatening. From all this we created “Keepin’ it REAL: R- refuse; E-explain; A-avoid; and L-leave.”

   Like Hecht, Parrott feels that real-life input is critical to the success of health messages because most of us learn how to talk about the range of topics associated with health and well-being from our families. And all families are affected by a dynamic cultural and political environment that establishes parameters in the realm of health behavior and information, influenced by friends, media, and medical professionals.

   “Why do some families talk to their children about sun exposure and sunscreen while others encourage their children to get a tan?” she asks. “These issues and others broaden the focus of health promotion, care, and education in order to bring to the forefront the critical role that communication processes play in health and well-being.”