Since hunger, the number one health risk factor worldwide, accounts for 25,000 deaths each day, food security is a serious global challenge. Accordingly, a communication studies and public health faculty member, Dr. John C. Pollock, and seven students in an International Communication class conducted a nineteen-nation survey of newspaper coverage of Genetically Modified Foods (GMOs), designed to increase disease resistance and crop yield. Contrary to conventional wisdom that media typically reflect the interests of political and economic elites, the TCNJ team’s systematic research on demographics and GMO coverage strikingly revealed that media can mirror the interests of society’s most “vulnerable,” encountering more “favorable” coverage of GMOs in countries with higher poverty levels, more contaminated water, and greater proportions employed in agriculture.
After TCNJ student co-authors, the only invited undergraduates in the world, presented their findings at a prestigious DC Health Communication Conference, their paper on “Cross-National Coverage of Genetically Modified Foods: A Community Structure Approach” was published in a summer, 2017, issue of “Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly”, the flagship journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, in a special issue on “Advances in Global Health Communication”. Student authors included Krysti Peitz (’16), Elizabeth Watson (’16), Cara Esposito (’15), Phil Nichilo (’15), James Etheridge (’15), Melissa Morgan (’17), and Taylor Hart-McGonigle (’17). Lead student author Krysti Peitz commented, “Writing and presenting the GMO paper have shown me that hard work, organization, passion, and dedication really do pay off.”
Two of the student authors have attended leading grad/professional schools. James Etheridge (’15), who earned his Master’s in Public Health from Columbia in May, 2017, now works at highly regarded advertising giant McCann in a specialized health unit addressing some of the world’s greatest health threats including HIV/AIDS and malaria. James returned to TCNJ for fall, 2017, and spring, 2018, to teach a key course in both health communication and the new public health major: Health and Risk Communication Campaigns. Taylor Hart-McGonigle (’17) is attending the nation’s top-ranked graduate program in public affairs, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse, where after two years, she–already fluent in Arabic– will earn combined master’s degrees in public affairs and international relations.