Research

Every day, you are making countless micro-decisions, many of them unconscious: What and when to eat, when to get up from your desk and stretch, when to glance at your phone, when to say hello to someone passing by, when to take a nap.

In short, how do you spend your day?

The United States has seen a 200% increase in the rate of deaths by opioid overdose in the last 20 years. But many of these deaths were preventable. Naloxone, also called Narcan, is a prescription drug that reverses opioid overdoses, and in more than 40 states — including Pennsylvania — there is a standing order policy, which makes it available to anyone, without an individual prescription from a healthcare provider.

Political polarization is a well-documented issue in the United States, and the schism between left and right can sometimes feel impossible to overcome. But a new study from the Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab (PCNL) at the Annenberg School for Communication and Beyond Conflict may offer some hope for the future.

In 2019, the World Health Organization declared vaccine hesitancy one of the top 10 threats to global health. In recent years, worldwide measles outbreaks in communities with low immunization rates have revealed gaps in the herd immunity that once protected us, including the United States’ largest measles outbreak in 20 years in 2019. The troubling trend of declining vaccination uptake is fueled by complacency and loss of confidence in the system that develops, produces, recommends, and delivers vaccines.

Since early March, New York City has suffered the most acute outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. As of the time of writing, the NYC Department of Health has recorded 171,723 cases of COVID-19 — well over ten percent of the 1,171,510 national cases reported by the CDC.

Blinking and rasping, the patient admits that it’s hard for him to breathe. He is suspected to have COVID-19 and he needs to be intubated. It’s a routine procedure that has taken on added risk because it so easily “aerosolizes” the germs that cause the disease, sending them widely into the air.

During this pandemic, there are countless voices urging Americans to engage in the kind of civic behaviors that keep us all safe, like social distancing and frequent hand washing. These voices come at the national, state, and local level. But which ones are actually getting through, making it more likely that Americans will comply with the recommendations?

Graduating Communication major Toni Walker C’20 spent 12 days in South Africa conducting research as part of her undergraduate fellowship with the Annenberg School’s Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication. What follows is her first person account of the trip and how it informed her work.

More than 45 faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows, and research staff will present research at the International Communication Association’s 70th Annual Conference, to be held virtually. The conference will be asynchronous, and the platform will be open 24 hours a day from May 20-26. Registered participants can log in, view any content, and make comments at any time during those days.