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ADVANCE Member Research Spotlight: Q&A with Rebekah Crawford, Ph.D

Q: Can you share a brief bio?

A: As a public health communication scholar, I research health disparities that are enabled by, and perpetuated through, human interactions, relationships, organizations, and cultures. My questions focus on communication’s influences on community health since messages constitute the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that either promote health or perpetuate inequities through society and time. Specifically, I research experiences of invisible difference, such as mental illness, religious identity, and sexual and gender minorities, to learn more about how stigma, discrimination, and social oppression translate into barriers that inhibit holistic health. I use qualitative and mixed methodologies to conduct engaged, community-based, participatory, and responsive studies. With my expertise, I seek to advance theoretical knowledge while simultaneously building communities’ capacities to organize, educate, and collaborate for improved health outcomes.

Q: What is a current project that you are excited about?

A: I am currently excited about the Association of Ohio Health Commissioners (AOHC) Quality Improvement (QI) project as well as a new project starting up looking at why we do not have mental health providers who are also people of color in proportion to their population in the state of Ohio.

Q: How does this project address health equity?

A: Public Health is focused on decreasing health disparities. The [AOHC QI] project is looking back at the state’s public health system’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic with the intent to find areas of expertise and improvement so that in the future, underserved communities will have improved health outcomes.

Q: Is this project interdisciplinary? If so, how does the project benefit from different disciplines?

A: This project is both mixed methods and interdisciplinary. We have a health communications scholar, a licensed social worker, a medical anthropologist, and a social investment expert all collaborating on the study with various members of the public health profession.

Q: What are the most interesting research findings from this project so far?

A: The public health workforce in Ohio went to extreme measures to create pandemic outcomes that far outstripped expectations based on states with comparable public health budgets.  

Q: Did graduate or undergraduate students contribute to your research? 

A: Yes both graduate and undergraduate students have contributed to the project: helping to create baseline reports, clean and check transcripts, and conduct analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data.

Q: Is there a funding source you would like to acknowledge? 

A: Yes, the Association for Ohio Health Commissioners and the Ohio Department of Health.

Q: What do you hope is taken away from this research?

A: I hope state leaders better understand what public health professionals endured during the pandemic and are persuaded to build and fund a more sustainable public health system in the future. 

Dr. Rebekah Crawford will present more about the AOHC QI project at the ADVANCE Lunch Seminar on February 21, 2024 at 12:00 PM EST. The event will take place virtually via Microsoft Teams. Please contact ADVANCE Co-Director, Cory Cronin, Ph.D. at croninc@ohio.edu for a Teams meeting invitation.