HCOM 20303: Health, Communication & Media

About the course: This course challenges students to analyze how health, communication and media intersect and how coverage impacts diverse groups. Four professors each teach about four weeks of the semester, allowing students to view the health communication and media realm from the perspective of a journalist, film/television/digital media professional, strategic communicator and communication studies professional. The course fulfills TCU’s Social Science core requirement.

Instructors: Wendy Macias, associate professor of strategic communication and associate dean of undergraduate studies; Jaime Loke, associate professor of journalism; Qinghua “Candy” Yang, assistant professor of communication studies; Jie “Jackie” Zhuang, assistant professor of communication studies

Class times: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30 to 1:50 p.m.

Class size: Maximum of 25 students

Texts: Excerpts from: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Broadway Books, 2011); The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (FSG Adult, 2012); Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Random House, 2007); “From Kim Kardashian to Dr. Oz: The Future Relevance of Popular Culture to Our Health and Health Policy” by Timothy Caulfield (Ottawa Law Review, Vol. 47, No. 2, 2016)

Classwork: Students participate in online discussion boards and quizzes. The course covers topics such as the representation of autism in television and inconsistent media coverage of chronic diseases in Mexico. Students give a disease presentation and write a critical thinking paper. After evaluating health campaigns in the media, students design their own campaign, which as a final project they present at the end of the course.