Angela Palmer-Wackerly and Dawn Braithwaite, Communication Studies Professors, will be speaking at our Wednesday workshop this week.
DR. ANGELA PALMER-WACKERLY, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, specializes in Health Communication and researches the ways in which identities and supportive communication from family, friends, and health care providers relate to patients' health and treatment decisions. She uses mixed methods and community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles to examine illness identity, culture, health literacy, support, disclosure, risk, and health care access to inform culturally competent, sustainable interventions to improve health equity. Her specific areas of interest are: (1) improving communication between families, patients, and providers to influence health and treatment decision-making in cancer, infertility, and the intersection between these two diseases; and (2) rural community engagement through cultural identity and communication to create sustainable solutions to community-defined health problems, such as cancer, diabetes, mental health, and health-care access. Examples of her work can be found in Health Communication, Journal of Health Communication, American Journal of Community Psychology, Qualitative Health Research, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Journal of Cancer Education, Journal of Aging and Health, and Journal of Community Health. She teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate level in Health Communication, Communication and Health Disparities, and Mental Health Communication.
DR. DAWN O. BRAITHWAITE, WILLA CATHER PROFESSOR AND DEPARTMENT CHAIR, studies how people in personal and family relationships communicate and negotiate family change and challenges. Her research centers on communication in understudied and changing families, communication rituals, and dialectics of relating in stepfamilies and among voluntary (fictive) kin. Dr. Braithwaite has authored over 120 articles and is co-author or co-editor of five books including Family Communication: Cohesion and Change and Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication. She received the National Communication Association's Brommel Award for Outstanding Contributions in Family Communication, the NCA Family Communication Division Book Award and the Interpersonal Communication Miller Book Award, the UNL College of Arts and Sciences Award for Outstanding Research in Social Science. Dr. Braithwaite was named the Western States Communication Association Distinguished Scholar in 2014. She is currently a Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families. Dr. Braithwaite is a Past President of the Western States Communication Association and received the Distinguished Service Award. She is a Past President of the National Communication Association and received NCA’s Becker Distinguished Service Award.