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This article, in the form of a case study, describes insight gleaned from a community-based civil rights health assessment project used within a 'majority--minority' community (one in which people of color are in the majority). In particular, the article explores the importance of recognizing the civil rights experiences of contemporary citizens as a means to inform policy, procedures, and practice. Using a phenomenology framework and narratives from a public forum and multiple focus group sessions, 2 research questions are explored: (a) What widespread beliefs inform the civil rights discourse of citizens in a community where people of color are in the majority? and (b) What issues are described as most salient in such a community? Five themes are explicated: (a) 'equal opportunity doesn't exist'; (b) 'discrimination is all around us'; (c) 'the deck is stacked against us'; (d) 'we have no legal redress when violations occur'; and (e) 'when we do complain, nothing is done.' The article includes a discussion of how these thematic findings contributed to changes at the city and state levels; implications for future communication research and practice also are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstinence for most adolescent-aged college students relates to several factors, including strong religious beliefs, an aversion to taking risks, high career expectations, or limited attractiveness. Young adults receive hundreds of messages from various sources; therefore, understanding their memorable sexual messages is essential. This exploratory research uses an interpretive method to unravel the memorable sexual narratives of 65 virgin respondents. Findings yield two primary themes: involuntary abstinence, and conscious abstinence, which demonstrate that messages of abstinence are important yet often imbue punitive internal attitudes and beliefs derived from mainstream media and peer relationships. The article concludes with a recommendation for health practitioners and communication scholars to create positive open spaces where young adults can discuss sexuality, sexual relationships, and sexual behaviors. Additionally, understanding stigmas related to abstinence helps reframe normative sex communication messages and promote constructive short- and long-term sexual health behaviors.

Drawing from recent research on first-generation college (FGC) students, this chapter advances an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding how these students enact multiple aspects of their personal, cultural, and social identities. I use dialectical and cross-cultural adaptation theories as a foundation to extend examinations of how diverse FGC students negotiate the alien culture of the academy against that of home. In this regard, college is situated as a pivotal point of development, and successful negotiation of identity tensions is represented as a key factor in academic success.

Increased rates of childhood obesity combined with more accessible information about the relationship between diet, physical activity and inactivity, and chronic diseases suggest the need for analyzing the complex process of receiving and transmitting messages related to child feeding practices. This study examined the perceptions of childhood obesity within 1 multiethnic community, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In particular, through the use of focus groups, individuals indicated that sociocultural, familial, and official nutritional messages were most influential to their health care behaviors. The coordinated management of meaning (CMM) theory was used to gain insight into how individuals negotiate competing messages occurring at different levels of meaning. Given its focus on cultural influences (parallel to the concepts of archetypes), CMM proved especially relevant for understanding child feeding beliefs, values, attitudes, and practices in diverse ethnic populations. Implications for future health communication research that might draw from a CMM approach were identified, as well as pragmatic endeavors that focus on the development, implementation, and evaluation of culturally appropriate interventions in the prevention of childhood obesity.

Through a phenomenological framework, the authors attempt to shed light on the communication processes of organ transplant recipients when discussing transplantation and related topics. Eight essential themes (awareness, support, commitment, pride, education, mentoring, comparison, and community) emerged from 37 participants as central to the communicative experiences of transplant recipients and their families. Additional insight was generated through a 2nd tier of focus group discussions resulting in a proposed model of transplant recipient communication. An interpretation of the model, implications for future research, and implications for praxis are presented.

This article explores the ways in which registered nurses communicate about organizational wrongdoing. Critical incidents were gathered from over 200 registered nurses. Through the phenomenological process of description, reduction, and interpretation, 5 themes emerged as central to responses of policy violations and personal ethics in the workplace: (a) perceptions of wrongdoing, (b) upholding the ideals of the profession, (c) clarity and evidence of wrongdoing, (d) consequences of reporting, and (e) workplace dynamics. The interpretative findings focus on how these themes are united by a tension that nurses face in terms of adhering to policy while attempting to manage the realities of their everyday professional lives. A discussion of these findings, including how they relate to existing and future research and practice, is offered.