Curriculum
Health Communications, Minor Core Courses
Health Communications Minor requires a total of 6.5 course units. You must select 3 courses from Nursing and 3 courses from Communication.
Nursing Courses (3.5 course units required)
NURS 1030 |
This course explores and integrates the intersection of psychological, cognitive, and social development with the lived experiences of individuals, families, and communities across the lifespan in order to conduct socially contextualized health assessments and health teaching. Extant theories will be critically analyzed and examined with respect to issues of health care access, health history, health promotion, and issues of equity and diversity from a life-course perspective. This knowledge will be synthesized and integrated with the development of the student’s communication skills and interviewing processes necessary to develop socially attuned health history and teaching that promote psychological well being and healthy lifestyles. Simulated and observational experiences provide students with opportunities to acquire and apply knowledge necessary for conducting a comprehensive health history of an individual situated within a diverse community. They also provide opportunities to develop prioritized health teaching plans in partnership with that individual. Fall Prerequisite: NURS 1010 AND NURS 1020 1 Course Unit |
NURS 2350 |
This course examines the influences of psychological, emtional, cognitive and social development of individuals and groups across the lifespan. Students combine this foundational knowledge with their developing understanding of social determinants of health. This course will help students learn to identify and assess individual, family and group level needs for those persons at risk for or experiencing behavioral or psychiatric/mental health challenges using evidence-based interventions applicable across the continuum of care. Emphasis is placed on the role of the professional nurse in assuring the delivery of equitable behavioral and pychiatric/mental health nursing care. The course addresses nursing phenomena of concern related the meanings of a behavioral or mental mental health illness and the development of healing relationships with individuals, families, and groups. In addition, the student will learn essential advanced communication strategies, including exposure to skills necessary for motivational interviewing, essential to engage individual and families in mental health promotion and treatment. This course provides the tools to enable students to construct effective interventions groups with patients, collaborate with disciplinary and inter-professional colleagues, and understand the healing dimensions of environments. Clinical and simulation experiences are designed to provide sufficient opportunities for clinical reasoning, clinical care, and clinically situated knowledge integration. Fall Prerequisite: NURS 1650 1.5 Course Unit |
NURS 3200 |
Designing to Care is informed by ideas and skills from across the disciplines of design, nursing, and health research. As an interdisciplinary and project-based course, it actively examines the connection between the design of healthcare, how we communicate health strategies, and the impact of both on individual, institutional, and community wellbeing. Through this course, students are exposed to the content (evidence, research, and misconceptions) and the context (people, places, and systems) that impact health as we generate compelling human-centered design and science-based strategies that can impact the lives of those who live within and beyond our local Philadelphia community. It culminates in the ideation, development, and realization of a collaborative project that strategically communicates, educates, or otherwise works to improve health at the individual, institutional, or community level. The course includes direct, project engagement and guest lectures from healthcare, design, communication, and health research professionals. It incorporates targeted skill building and software training, individual and group activities, class conversations and critiques, and community engagement. From this foundation, the goal is to create real, implementable, and innovative solutions to health and healthcare challenges that embody design in action. 1 Course Unit |
NURS 3530 |
Health communication spans activities from in-person communication to technology based interventions and mass media campaigns. Health communication interventions are applied across a variety of health promotion and disease prevention activities. In this course, we will explore a variety of approachesto using communication strategies to improve individual and population health. The course will provide an introduction to the theory, design, and evaluation of health communication programs. We will review and critique several health communication interventions. The course will also include a special emphasis on new media and technology, as well as developing practical skills for developing health communication programs. 1 Course Unit |
NURS/COMM/PSYC 2760 |
Have you wondered why people undergo religious conversion, change their political affiliation, suddenly endorse conspiracy theories, alter their taste in music, or seek hypnosis to quit smoking? What is common to these processes of change, and how does resistance to change play out across these seemingly different contexts? In “Why We Change,” we will ask unique questions such as how religious change might highlight methods of transforming public health communications or how the study of attitude change might yield new theories about the impact of life experiences on personality. Broadly speaking, the class will provide an opportunity for students to learn theories of belief formation, attitudes and persuasion, normative influence, and behavioral change. For example, we will work to understand how specific beliefs, such as group stereotypes, or specific attitudes, such as trust and values, change in response to variations in the environment and communication with other people. We will cover culturally based and professional approaches to change, from fear appeals to motivational interviewing, to hypnosis. Students will read empirical studies and conduct observational projects about potential sources of social, cultural, or psychological change and resistance to change in Philadelphia. Also Offered As: COMM 2760, PSYC 2760 1 Course Unit |
Communications Courses (3 course units required)
Comm 1250 |
This course introduces students to social science research regarding the influence of mediated communication on individual and collective attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Throughout the semester we explore the impacts of various types of mediated content (e.g., violence, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, politics and activism, health and wellbeing); genres (e.g., news, entertainment, educational, marketing); and mediums (e.g., television, film, social media) on what we think and how we act. The aim of the course is to provide students with (1) a general understanding of both the positive and negative effects of mediated communication on people’s personal, professional, social, and civic lives; and (2) the basic conceptual tools needed to evaluate the assumptions, theories, methods, and empirical evidence supporting these presumed effects. Class meets twice a week as a lecture and once a week in smaller discussion groups led by graduate teaching fellows. In addition to a midterm exam and occasional short assignments, students have the option of producing a multi-media capstone project or a final term paper on a media-effects topic of their choice. Group projects or final papers are permitted, with approval of the instructor. Spring 1 Course Unit |
Comm 1300 |
The aim of this course is to prepare you to work in the media business as well as to be an informed citizen by acquainting you with the work and language of media practitioners. The class also investigates the exciting, and (to some employed there) scary changes taking place in the news industry, internet industry, advertising industry, television industry, movie industry, magazine industry, and several other areas of the media system. In doing that, the course ranges over economic, political, legal, historical, and cultural considerations that shape what we see when we go online, use social media, watch TV, read books, play video games, and more. Spring 1 Course Unit |
COMM 2100 |
This course is a general overview of the important components of social research. The goal of the course is to understand the logic behind social science research, be able to view research with a critical eye and to engage in the production of research. It will cover defining research problems, research design, assessing research quality, sampling, measurement, and causal inference. The statistical methods covered will include descriptive and inferential statistics, measures of association for categorical and continuous variables, inferences about means, and the basic language of data analysis. Course activities will include lectures, class exercises, reading published scientific articles, using statistical software, and discussing research featured in the news. Fall or Spring 1 Course Unit |
Comm 2250 |
This course examines children’s relationships to media in their historic, economic, political, and social contexts. The class explores the ways in which “childhood” is created and understood as a time of life that is qualitatively unique and socially constructed over time. It continues with a review of various theories of child development as they inform children’s relationships with and understanding of media. It reviews public policies designed to empower parents and limit children’s exposure to potentially problematic media content and simultaneously considers the economic forces that shape what children see and buy. The course also provides a critical examination of research on the impact of media on children’s physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. Students in this course produce a proposal for an educational children’s media product as their final project. |
COMM 2750 |
This course examines theory, research, and application in the persuasive effects of communication in social and mass contexts. The primary focus will be on the effects of messages on attitudes, opinions, values, and behaviors. Applications include political, commercial, and public service advertising, propaganda, and communication campaigns (e.g. anti-smoking). Students will develop their own communication campaign over the semester. The campaign will include identifying and analyzing the persuasion problem, the target audience’s characteristics and media habits, and then creating a persuasive message consistent with research and practice targeted to the problem and its solution. |
COMM 3100 |
In this hands-on course students will work with active researchers in the Communication Neuroscience lab at Penn to gain experience in how research works. Students will have the opportunity to interact closely with a mentor and will gain experience conceptualizing research questions, designing experiments, and collecting and analyzing data. Not Offered Every Year Prerequisite: (COMM 2100 OR HSOC 2002 OR INTR 3500 OR MKTG 2120 OR SOCI 2000 OR URBS 2000) 1 Course Unit |
COMM 3450 |
How are adolescents represented in media and what effects do these portrayals have on developing teens? What makes adolescents a “jackpot market” to be targeted by advertising and how can they be swayed by mediated public health efforts to encourage health-promoting behaviors? Finally, what does the increasingly mediated nature of everyday life mean for adolescents, their friends, and their families during their journey into adulthood? We will explore these questions by reading key empirical studies and by critically analyzing film, music, and public service announcements portraying and/or targeting adolescents from the 1950s to the present day. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit |
COMM 4070 |
Digital technologies have made communication networks ubiquitous: even when we can’t really notice them, they mediate most aspects of our daily activities. Networks, however, have always been the backbone of social life: long before Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or other similar platforms, communication created channels for information diffusion that linked people in myriad other ways. Through letters, commerce, or simply face to face interactions, people have always been exposed to the behavior of others. These communicative ties embed us into an invisible web of influence that we can make tangible and analyze. This course will teach you how to map those connections in the form of networks, and how to study those networks so that we can improve our understanding of social life. The goal is to help you grasp the consequences of connectivity, and how small changes in the structure of our ties can lead to big differences in how networks behave. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit |
COMM 4320 |
Digital information and communication technologies are intertwined with our everyday lives, from banking, to working, and dating. They’re also increasingly crucial parts of our most powerful institutions, from policing, to the welfare state, and education. This course examines the ways that these technologies combine with traditional axes of inequality like race, gender, and class in ways that may deepen social inequality. We’ll consider major approaches to understanding digital inequalities and apply them to case studies of both problems and solutions. Students will learn to critically analyze policies and programs from a variety of perspectives, and to evaluate the promise of digital technologies against their potential perils. Fall 1 Course Unit |
To enroll in the Health Communications Minor, students must submit the “Declare/Update Field of Study” form found here.
Upon completion of the minor and with approval of the designated advisors, the Office of Student Information will record the minor on the student’s transcript.
Students can contact Office of Academic Affairs at advisor@nursing.upenn.edu.