Talking Health Communication at ACHA

By Mike Mackert

Tuesday afternoon a CHC team hosted a pre-conference workshop on health communication for the American College Health Association. I was joined by three fantastic CHC co-presenters: Jessica Hughes Wagner (to bring the campus health promotion perspective), Elizabeth Glowacki (to talk about tailoring and mobile health messaging), and Mackenzie Greenwell (to talk about interpersonal health communication).

Many CHC faculty and grad students have a long history of working with campus partners on a range of health communication research projects and class activities. I know I have incorporated a campus health communication project into almost every class I have taught since arriving at UT. Advertising students often haven’t considered how the skills they’re using could be applied to campus health and health communication, and they enjoy the new kind of problem to solve.

One of the things I most enjoy about this kind of workshop is the way it helps us bring together CHC work in evidence-based health communication scholarship and practice in an educational setting. Sharing research that was conducted in the context of a campus text messaging program to improve student health is an exciting way both to showcase the kind of research being done at UT, while also helping practitioners around the country think about how they could use such approaches in their own campus health promotion efforts.

It was a fun afternoon with a room full of dedicated campus health professionals – definitely a great way to start the week with some CHC colleagues and hopefully do something that could contribute to improving the health of college students around the country.