In mid-August, the Collaborative on Media & Messaging for Health and Social Policy team gathered for a full team meeting, hosted at Wesleyan University. This gathering provided a valuable opportunity to connect in person, brainstorm ideas, and set the stage for the work we’ll be undertaking this year.

One of the key principles of community-engaged research is to involve communities in the process of asking research questions. Doing so enables the research to be more useful and practical in the real world, and also advances equity principles in the conduct of research by putting the affected communities closer to the center of the research pr...

In a recent study published in Social Science & Medicine, Jiawei Liu and Jeff Niederdeppe examined studies about social comparison framing of health disparities.

The political discourse surrounding identity is particularly heated in early 2024, as the United States lurches toward another momentous election. Between news coverage of ongoing political attacks on college campuses and corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion issues; persistent attention to the roles of antisemitism and Islamophobia inflaming...

It is now abundantly clear that Republicans and Democrats have divergent views about COVID-19 – as evidenced by partisan gaps in attitudes, beliefs, and even behaviors, like wearing masks or getting a vaccine. Research has also demonstrated that people perceive the concept of health equity through the lens of partisanship. In a new study published...

In a recent study published in Human Communication Research, Jiawei Liu and Jeff Niederdeppe examined the effects of public health messages that feature cancer risk comparisons and screening rate comparisons between Black Americans and White Americans.

The Collaborative on Media & Messaging for Health and Social Policy team gathered for a full team retreat in August, hosted at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

The Covid-19 pandemic posed a particularly difficult challenge for public health communicators because the information environment was rife with partisan cues and messaging that often contradicted or challenged the authority of scientific experts. The media played an ambiguous role in this regard: On the one hand, it served as a conduit for scientific...

Our COMM team had the opportunity to collaborate with the Berkeley Media Studies Group on an analysis of print and TV broadcast news stories about hunger and food assistance aired in 2021. This blog post was originally published on the BMSG website and examines how equity appeared in news about food assistance from 2021.

In April, President Biden signed an executive order that directed federal agencies to seek solutions to the persistent problems of early care and education (ECE) access and lack of affordability.  (ECE encompasses the settings where young children receive care from someone other than a family member or their primary caregiver.)