Faculty Profile: Sachiko Terui

SACHIKO TERUI

Assistant Professor, Department of Communication

When Dr. Sachiko Terui first began her job as assistant professor with the Department of Communication and Film, she noticed a stark contrast between UofM students and others she has taught over the years.

“At places I had previously taught, I didn’t find a large number of students showing or expressing dire health needs until I met students at the University of Memphis,” she said. “Of course, there is a distinct possibility that the student population here is not necessarily sicker, but they are more willing to share their issues and concerns than the ones at universities where I previously worked. That made me feel like the health problems here are at the front of many people’s lives.”

As a health communication expert, Terui meets with people facing various health challenges to understand the nature of their problems, which in turn helps to inform care providers with ways to make a meaningful impact on their patients' lives. For Terui, the people she formerly had to seek out and ask to share their stories were now sitting right in front of her, offering candid conversations about significant health issues in the region.

“Although the students at the University of Memphis want to focus on their studies, sometimes these problems don’t allow them to do so,” she said. “That kind of inequity is unique and has bothered me for quite some time. I care about their right to learn, even if their living conditions don’t exactly allow them to do so.”

The unique range of health issues and disparities facing people in the Mid-South provided an opportunity to make a meaningful impact and practice what Terui does best as a health communicator.

“That early realization gave me the motivation to stay here at the University of Memphis, so I applied to the tenuretrack position,” she said.

Terui initially came to the United States after earning a bachelor’s degree from Aichi Prefectural University in Japan, which led to her joining a program to teach Japanese at the University of Louisiana and a subsequent fulltime position at the University of Minnesota. Shortly after, Terui headed to the University of Oklahoma to study health communication in depth and earn her PhD before committing to a visiting assistant professor position at the University of Memphis.

“I started my career with a focus on interpersonal communication and intercultural communication,” she said. “At the time I started studying those areas, I was driven by my own interests. But after I encountered health problems and saw people suffer, I found that there was a way to make more of a direct impact in people’s lives.”

Terui said her choice to focus on health communication studies helped her to better understand the importance of working through various intercultural boundaries or barriers and realize that, oftentimes, the best treatment for one patient is not necessarily best for another. Terui’s work in intercultural communication in patientprovider interactions speaks to various inequities in health care, with an emphasis on culture and language differences that may appear to be very subtly in our everyday lives, but can greatly impact the care we receive as patients.

“Culture is an interesting and complex concept,” she said. “It’s easy to think in clear lines such as American culture and Japanese culture, but there are instances where multiple cultures can coexist in a single geographic area. For example, in Memphis we have Southern culture, African American culture and more at play. That all reflects different ways that people internalize their values, ideas and practices.”

In addition to patient care and cross-cultural communication, Terui’s recent projects center on interdisciplinary collaborations, including communities and health care organizations. In 2020, she received the College of Communication and Fine Arts Dean's Outstanding Research Award for her work in health communication studies.