Risk Communication Laboratory

RCL Collaborators

• The Health Communication Collaborative (HCC) is an interdisciplinary research group formed around researchers and clinicians at Temple University with common interests in health risk communication. Researchers from the Department of Public Health (within the College of Health Professions) include Sarah Bass, MPH, Ph.D., Thomas Gordon, Ph.D., and Sheryl Ruzek, MPH, PhD. Clinicians from the Department of General Internal Medicine within the Temple University Health System (TUHS) include Lawrence Kaplan, MD, Karen Lim, MD, Brian Meyer, MD, Stephanie Ward, MD, Lalitha Parameswaran, MBBS, MPH, and Anuradha Paranjape, MD, MPH. The Collaborative meets regularly to design, execute, and publish research projects involving health and risk communication. Current projects include: (1) the development of decision aids to encourage low-literacy patients to take advantage of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. (2) Reviews of the CRC literature related to screening practices among at-risk sub populations, primarily African Americans and Latinos. (3) Modeling, through perceptual mapping techniques, how 1st vs. 3rd year medical residents perceive their patients when it comes to making decisions about CRC screening.

• The Center for Preparedness Research, Education, and Practice (C-PREP) is a collaborating unit within the Department of Public Health, Alice Hausman, Director. The Risk Communication Lab has contributed to C-PREP studies involving the Pennsylvania State Department of Health, including: (1) How emergency room personnel perceive the failed campaign by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to vaccinate healthcare workers against smallpox. (2) A comparative analysis of smallpox vaccination rates across all 50 states. (3) A study of the state Health Department’s brochure on disaster preparedness, assessing psycho-physiological reactions, and eye-tracking patterns.

Other recent collaborations:
• The School of Communications and Theater (Priscilla Murphy) in a computerized textual analysis of the documents from the Tobacco Master Settlement, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

• The Department of Psychiatry (Ralph Spiga) perceptual mapping of patient perceptions of the risks/barriers to drug addiction rehabilitation.

• The Counseling Psychology Department (Suni Peterson) perceptual mapping of African American women’s perceptions of the risks and benefits of mammogram screening.