Building and Maintaining a Whole Community Initiative: Health Communication in Practice with Be Well Communities™.

The most effective health communication builds from evidence-based best practices and theory. In practice, health campaigns rely on considerations often under-discussed in health communication, such as consistent agency-style client service, image management, and community coalition-building. Health outcome progress often requires change at multiple levels, from individual cognition and behavior to policy creation.

Implementation and Evaluation of a Multi-level, Place-Based Tobacco Prevention and Control Program at a Minority-Serving Institution in Texas.

Multi-level, place-based interventions have proven effective at promoting a range of health behaviors, including tobacco control and discouraging the uptake of tobacco products. This paper describes the implementation and impact of a 3-year, multi-level tobacco prevention and control program at a community-college minority-serving institution (MSI) on the Texas Gulf Coast within the context of a broader multi-sector, cross-functional health coalition. The intervention studied included a tobacco-free policy, a large-scale communication campaign highlighting parts of the intervention and prevention and cessation resources.

Countering online marketing and user endorsements with enhanced cannabis warning labels: An online experiment among at-risk youth and young adults.

As cannabis legalization expands and online marketing intensifies, this study examines whether online social cues can amplify youth-targeted cannabis advertising and whether cannabis warning labels (CWLs) can counteract these influences. A U.S.

Gain/loss framing moderates the VMPFC's response to persuasive messages when behaviors have personal outcomes.

Activity within the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) during encoding of persuasive messages has been shown to predict message-consistent behaviors both within scanner samples and at the population level. This suggests that neuroimaging can aid in the development of better persuasive messages, but little is known about how the brain responds to different message features. Building on past findings, the current study found that gain-framed persuasive messages elicited more VMPFC activation than loss-framed messages, but only when messages addressed outcomes that would be experienced by participants directly.

Fun with Frustration? TikTok Influencers' Emotional Expression Predicts User Engagement with COVID-19 Vaccination Messages.

This study examined what kinds of TikTok video and message features are associated with user engagement in the context of COVID-19 vaccination. Content analysis was applied to study a sample of 223 COVID-19 vaccination-related videos from creators with at least 10,000 followers. The content analysis involved coding themes, video formats, the valence of attitude toward vaccination, and emotional expressions from the influencers.

A Test of Autonomy Restoration Postscripts to Mitigate Psychological Reactance to an Opt-Out Organ Donor Registry in the United States.

The organ shortage continues to present problems around the world including the United States. In response, some countries have switched from an opt-in organ donor registry to an opt-out registry. The United States currently utilizes an opt-in registry where an individual is not considered an organ donor until they register their intentions.

An Investigation into the Portrayal of Organ Donation on Seasons 1 Through 15.

The current project sought to extend prior research examining organ donation portrayals on by examining the first fifteen seasons. Guided by the health belief model, content analysis revealed more attention was given to benefits of donation than barriers. Contrary to previous research, more attention was given to refuting rather than promoting commonly cited myths.

Psychological Reactance Theory and COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates: The Roles of Threat Magnitude and Direction of Threat.

The current study examines psychological reactance theory (PRT), focusing on the role of threat directness and threat magnitude in the context of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Students on two college campuses in the United States ( = 374) were informed that their university or the other university (i.e.

State mask mandates and psychological reactance theory: The role of political partisanship and COVID-19 risk in mask adoption and resistance.

Rationale: Psychological reactance theory was applied to examine the implications of state-level mask mandates in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluated the role of political partisanship and COVID-19 risk on changes in self-reported mask wearing before and after the imposition and removal of state mask mandates.

Method: Secondary data from several sources were aggregated about self-reported mask wearing behavior, state mandates, COVID-19 infection rates, and state-level political partisanship.

Denying and Accepting a Family Member's Illness: Uncertainty Management as a Process.

Doubt is a common, yet challenging form of uncertainty to have about another's illness. Although navigating illness uncertainty is a process of continual (re)appraisal and management, existing research narrowly examines windows of uncertainty experience. To illustrate how uncertainty management in the context of doubt is recursive, nonlinear, and ongoing, we apply a process approach to communication to uncertainty management theory.

Raising Concussion Awareness among Amateur Athletes: An Examination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Campaign.

Attention to concussion prevention and management has grown in recent years due to the potentially long-term, debilitating effects a head injury can have on an individual. Although multiple campaigns have been designed to target this issue, there remains a need to evaluate the persuasive principles used to advocate for safety measures and protocols, specifically within youth sports. With this in mind, we applied the health belief model (HBM) in our content analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) concussion awareness campaign.