EPIC CECCR Director Receives Award for Distinguished Teaching

Robert Hornik, Ph.D., Director of the EPIC CECCR, was recently awarded a 2008 Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching. The Lindback Awards for Distinguished Teaching were established at the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 with the help of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation. Penn generally gives eight Lindback awards each year, divided evenly between health-related disciplines and all other departments and divisions. Award winners are determined by nominations and recommendations made by faculty and students based on certain guidelines. Dr. Hornik and seven other Lindback award recipients were honored in a ceremony at Penn in April 2008. For more on this study,click here.

Recent CECCR-Related Publications

CECCR-related research recently appeared in the Western Journal of Communication and Journal of Health Communication.

Annenberg graduate Yahui Kang, Ph.D. and Joseph Cappella, Ph.D. recently published a study in the Western Journal of Communication (volume 72, number 1) titled Emotional Reactions to and Perceived Effectiveness of Media Messages: Appraisal and Message Sensation Value. Appraisal theory examines how cognitive appraisals of events lead to specific emotions. Message sensation value may work as an elicitor of arousal to intensify the impact of discrete emotions on message effectiveness evaluation. This study examined the impacts of appraisal and message sensation value in the context of public service announcements to illustrate effective ways to construct emotional and persuasive messages.

Annenberg graduate Jeff Niederdeppe, Ph.D., CECCR pilot project investigator Dominick Frosch, Ph.D., and Robert Hornik, Ph.D. recently published a study in the Journal of Health Communication (volume 13). This study, titled Cancer News Coverage and Information Seeking, examines the relationship between cancer news coverage and information seeking using data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), a national survey of adults. Results from the study suggest that a notable segment of the population actively responds to periods of elevated cancer news coverage by seeking additional information. But the article raises concerns about the potential for widened gaps in cancer knowledge and behavior between large segments of the population in the future.

EPIC CECCR Workshop Leads to Special Issue

In April 2007, the EPIC CECCR hosted a Media Exposure workshop titled Investigating Relations between Media Exposure and Cancer-Related or Other Behaviors: How Should we Measure Exposure? at the Annenberg School. This two-day workshop was chaired by Dr. Robert Hornik and Dr. Martin Fishbein of the Annenberg School and Dr. K. Viswanath of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University. Following the workshop, presenters were invited to submit manuscripts for inclusion in a special issue of Communication Methods and Measures. Four of the papers selected for publication in the special issue feature EPIC CECCR researchers. The special issue is scheduled for release in May 2008.

CECCRs Participate in Joint Grantee Meeting

The EPIC CECCR recently sponsored 15 representatives to attend the final joint meeting of the four Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research under the current CECCR initiative. Representatives from the CECCRs at Penn, Saint Louis University, University of Michigan, and University of Wisconsin at Madison convened in Atlanta April 28-29 at a meeting jointly sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society. The purpose of the meeting was to identify key results from the CECCR initiative and discuss opportunities for translation of results into practice. This meeting pulled together leading stakeholders in evidence-based cancer communication activities to discuss the translation of the emerging evidence base in communication science into population health impact.