W
hen you read the words “Department of Communication,” you might think about radio, TV, newspapers or social media. Thoughts of COVID-19 studies conducted in a university setting probably evoke thoughts of departments such as nursing or public health. But a faculty member in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Department of Communication has been working on research that focuses on improving the quality of life for at-risk populations. Assistant Professor Nagwan Zahry has been interested in health communication since her student days at Michigan State University. As a doctoral student, she worked as a research assistant collaborating with nursing, medicine and engineering faculty on a project linked to health, social media and messaging campaigns. After joining the UTC faculty in August 2018, Zahry continued to pursue her passion for health communication by specifically looking at low-income families in different
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contexts such as eating behaviors, physical activity and mental health. The pandemic has allowed her to advance that research. Zahry and her team recently conducted an analysis on stress management intervention among socio-economically disadvantaged families, which was published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies. A new study has Zahry and her team exploring how COVID-19 has affected lifestyle behaviors and mental health, she says, “and what coping strategies were helpful for dealing with challenges induced by COVID-19. “I am leading a team to study the impact of COVID-19 on low-income parents with preschoolers aged 3 to 5 years old to provide an in-depth snapshot of this vulnerable population’s lived experience during the pandemic. It is the first study in the U.S. that looks at this topic.” Results suggest that COVID-19 has profoundly changed low-income parents’ and their preschoolers’ lifestyle behaviors
