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COMM 479 Communication for Health Equity

Students will learn to apply an equity lens to multiple facets of health communication including: how race, culture, and bias play a role in patient-provider communication, health communication campaigns, and mediated representations of health issues in the U.S. context. Students will learn about the historical sources and causes of health disparities as well as learn ways to improve health disparities across these areas. Students will also be exposed to a community engagement component and have the opportunity to work with health disparities researchers and organizations.

Prerequisites

Special information

Note: COMM 372 prerequisite is optional.
4 Undergraduate credits

Effective August 18, 2025 to present

Meets graduation requirements for

Learning outcomes

General

  • Explain how racism, culture, and other social determinants influence health outcomes
  • Describe the historical basis of health disparities
  • Analyze how communication both interpersonally and in mediated contexts shapes how different audiences receive and use health messaging
  • Apply health disparities knowledge to a health equity issue in the community
  • Create job materials using knowledge learned from class to translate their skills and knowledge to explore career options in health equity
  • Apply equity lenses and critical theories in the context of health communication
  • Evaluate current efforts to address health disparities in the U.S.
  • Develop health communication plans and materials to promote health equity

Minnesota Transfer Curriculum

Goal 5: History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences

  • Employ the methods and data that historians and social and behavioral scientists use to investigate the human condition.
  • Examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods and cultures.
  • Use and critique alternative explanatory systems or theories.
  • Develop and communicate alternative explanations or solutions for contemporary social issues.

Goal 7A: Human Diversity, Race, Power, and Justice in the United States

  • Understand the development of and the changing meanings of group identities in the United States' history and culture.
  • Demonstrate an awareness of the individual and institutional dynamics of unequal power relations between groups in contemporary society.
  • Analyze their own attitudes, behaviors, concepts and beliefs regarding diversity, racism, and bigotry.
  • Describe and discuss the experience and contributions (political, social, economic, etc.) of the many groups that shape American society and culture, in particular those groups that have suffered discrimination and exclusion.
  • Demonstrate communication skills necessary for living and working effectively in a society with great population diversity.