Communications students earn 2008 TPRA award for health literacy campaign

Texas Advertising students earned a 2008 Texas Public Relations Association student competition award for developing a campaign targeted at pharmacies to raise awareness of health literacy issues in Central Texas.

Students worked directly with the client, the Literacy Coalition of Central Texas. "It made the project so much more meaningful to do work for an actual client, not a hypothetical client or situation," said team member Shelley Harse.

Undergraduate Public Relations students Andrea Ferdinand, Sarah Fine and Shelley Harse, plus Graduate advertising student Laura Williamson, created the program in fall 2007 as a final project for the public relations class "Health Communication: Theory and Practice."

The program, entitled "People to People: Improving health through communication," provided enrolled pharmacies a Pharm-Aid kit with tools to facilitate better communication between pharmacists and patients. It also generated regular publicity for member pharmacies and the cause, plus measured the effectiveness of the tools biannually through online and in-person surveys.

The client has decided to present the student materials at the 2008 Literacy Powerline Conference in Memphis, Tennessee Mar. 13-15.

The work was also a hit with pharmacists that pre-tested materials. Sarah Fine conducted most of the pre-testing and shared that, "The University Health Services pharmacists were really excited about the materials we created. They saw instant value for them in pharmacies and even came to our presentation."

Dr. Michael Mackert of the UT advertising department taught this new class. With eight students, the class worked for real clients throughout the semester and learned how to apply health communication theories in the real-world. Earlier in the semester, students developed a campaign for University Health Services to combat student stress.

Dr. Mackert has extensive background in health communications with a research focus on telemedicine, health communication, health literacy, and online communities.

For more information about the People to People campaign, contact Laura Williamson, Andrea Ferdinand, Sarah Fine, or Shelley Harse; for information on the class Health Communication: Theory and Practice, contact Dr. Michael Mackert; and for more information about the University of Texas Advertising Program, contact the graduate advisor Gary Wilcox.

3/5/2008