Board and Staff

Editor-in-Chief

Warren Bareiss
Division of Fine Arts & Communication Studies, University of South Carolina Upstate - BAREISS@uscupstate.edu

Dr. Warren (“Wren”) Bareiss teaches at the University of South Carolina Upstate where he founded the Health Communication minor. Courses that he teaches include Health Narrative, Health Messaging & the Media, and Communication Research Methods. Dr. Bareiss earned his PhD in Communication from Indiana University and his master’s—also in Communication—from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, both times minoring in Anthropology. He also has a postdoctoral graduate certificate in Health Communication from the University of South Carolina. His research has appeared in Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine and the Journal of Medical Humanities among other publications. He recently edited an anthology on non-suicidal self-injury, published by Lexington Books.

 

Editorial Board

Mike Alvarez
Department of Communication, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA

Dr. Mike Alvarez is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire, where he teaches courses in mental health communication, end of life communication, human communication and technology, and film studies. His research interests include online communication about suicide, representations of suicide in popular culture, mental health narratives, and death pedagogy. He is the author of The Paradox of Suicide and Creativity: Authentications of Human Existence(Lexington Books, 2020).

Jay Baglia
PhD, University of South Florida, 2003; De Paul University, Chicago, IL, USA

Is  Associate Professor of Health Communication in the College of Communication at DePaul University. He is the author of The Viagra Ad Venture: Masculinity, Media, and the Performance of Sexual Health (2005, Peter Lang Publishing), winner of NCA’s Health Communication Distinguished Book Award, and co-editor of Communicating Pregnancy Loss: Narrative as a Method for Change (2014, Peter Lang Publishing), winner of Organization for the Study of Communication Language and Gender’s Outstanding Book Award. Jay has published over three dozen book chapters, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and journal articles in publications such as Health Communication, Family Medicine, Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, and Text and Performance Quarterly. He is currently writing a book about toxicity. Dr. Baglia won the 2023 Ellis-Bochner Award with the article “The Ontology of Oncology: Navigating Cyborgs and Assemblages Through Cancer Treatment.”  published in Health Communication.

Abigail Baim-Lance
PhD, Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York City, NY, USA

Abigail Baim-Lance is an Assistant Professor in the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a Health Services Research Specialist with the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center at the Bronx VA. Trained in medical anthropology, implementation science, and health services research and evaluation, Dr Baim-Lance has conducted qualitative and mixed methods research in the United States, England, the Netherlands, and South Africa. Her interests involve using qualitative methodologies to improve the healthcare experiences of aging, vulnerable individuals with chronic complex illness and developing strategies and systems that better meet their needs.

Pietro Barbetta
Department of Psychology, University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy

Pietro Barbetta has experience in psychotherapy and clinical anthropology in Latin America (Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia) and Europe (Italy, UK, France, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland) and, particularly in Italy, in ethnoclinical therapy with African and Asian refugee and asylum seekers. Pietro is the author and co-author of several Italian, English, Spanish, and French scientific essays. His most recent book in Spanish is  Locura y Creacion, for Gedisa. His previous book in English is Ethical and Aesthetic Explorations of Systemic Practices; New Critical Reflections, together with Maria Esther Cavagnis, Inga Britt Krause, and Umberta Telfener, for Routledge. Pietro will launch a new international school for MDs and psychologists in systemic psychotherapy called “Disseminations.” He also plans to write a new book called The Languages with No Meaning (Lallation, Echolalias, and Glissolaias) based on interwoven experiences in clinics and literature he has had during his 35 years of clinical practice.

Mariaelena Bartesaghi
Department of Communication, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

Mariaelena Bartesaghi’s work in discourse studies addresses authority and entitlement to experience in health, crisis, and academic settings. She engages in multidisciplinary conversations on multimodality, the co-implication of material-discursive practices, and redistribution of agency. Mariaelena was the first the Editor-in-Chief of Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare and has guest edited two special issues of The Electronic Journal of Communication. She was one of 12 scholars invited to speak at the Annenberg Scholars Symposium on Discourses in Action at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. In 2005, she was awarded the National Communication Association (NCA) Language and Social Interaction Division Top Dissertation Award. In 2018, 2014 and 2012, Mariaelena received the Department Faculty Recognition Award and in 2012, the Florida Communication Association Best Teacher Award, the USF Communication HUB Award and NCA's award for Teachers on Teaching.

Elissa Z. Faro
PhD

Elissa Z. Faro, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on using implementation science theories and methods to improve care delivery systems by understanding the factors that determine how evidence-based interventions in health care are implemented. She brings ethnographic and mixed methods to participatory implementation approaches globally to improve equity for vulnerable populations in low resource settings. Dr. Faro’s current research portfolio includes an NIMH-funded R01 trial implementing an evidence-based mental health intervention in home visiting programs for pregnant people in Iowa and Indiana, as well as other Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and Health Research and Service Administration (HRSA)-funded projects providing qualitative, mixed methods, and implementation research expertise.

Paula Hopeck
Department of Communication Studies, Commonwealth University – Bloomsburg, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, USA

Paula Hopeck (PhD, Purdue University, 2013) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Commonwealth University—Bloomsburg. As a researcher, she has focused on end-of-life conversations between healthcare workers and family members, media cases surrounding end-of-life issues, and the training of nursing students to facilitate their transition to the field of nursing. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Health Communication, Nursing Inquiry, and The Journal of Communication and Religion. As an instructor, she mostly teaches for the Health Communication minor and in the Organizational Communication track, including classes such as Small Group Communication, Event Planning, Health Communication, and End-of-Life Communication. She has also mentored students interested in qualitative methods through different projects, including the Undergraduate Scholars Conference at the Eastern Communication Association's annual conference.

Doreen M.S. Jowi

Department of Communication Studies, Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania. Bloomsburg, PA, USA

Doreen Jowi Ph.D. The Ohio University, 2005) is an Associate Professor of Global Public Health and Population Health Research. Her pedagogy and scholarship center around health communication, quantitative research methods and statistics, epidemiology and biostatistics, global public health policy and governance, disease management, health policy analysis, and critical health economics. Her scholarly work has been featured in journals such as Journal of Computer Mediated Communication and Human Communication, National Communication Association Non-Serial Publications, book chapters in organizational communication books, and in Business and Applied Sciences Academy of North America Proceedings. Dr. Jowi is currently serving as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research and a data analyst for the International Health Section of the American Public Health Association.

Gary L. Kreps
Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Gary L. Kreps studies the poweful functions that human and mediated communication performs in health, risk, and crisis situations to promote wellbeing. He triangulates multiple research methods including large surveys, probing personal interviews, focus groups, field experiments, content analyses, archival analyses, usability testing, message testing, and user-centered design for developing and testing health communication programs, policies, practices, and technologies to improve health outcomes.

Kara Laskowski
Department of Communication Studies, Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, PA, USA

Kara Laskowski (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University) is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication Studies at Shippensburg University. Her teaching and scholarship are centered on the communication of identity, and communication and sport, with emphases on how identity and identity change, including health, is communicated across personal and professional contexts. She employs semi-structured interviews and case studies in teaching and research, including faculty-undergraduate student research, to advance applied knowledge of communication theory to develop communication skillsets for individuals. She is also active in leadership in the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty (APSCUF), the union representing faculty and coaches in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and has presented on Academic Union Responses to Vaccine Mandates at Higher Education Institutions in Canada and the United States at the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.

Elizabeth Spradley
Department of Mass Communication, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX, USA

Dr. Elizabeth (“Liz”) Spradley (Ph.D. Texas A&M) is an Associate Professor of Communication at Stephen F. Austin State University where she teaches courses in communication and medical humanities such as Interpersonal Communication, Health Communication, and Communication Theory. Dr. Spradley has served on the editorial board for Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine for a decade and is the two-time recipient of the Jim Towns Endowed Mentoring Professorship at SFASU. Using both interpretive and textual methods, Dr. Spradley’s work on health, narrative, identity, instructional communication, and work-from-home has been published in journals such as Communication Pedagogy, The Peabody Journal of Education, Atlantic Journal of Communication, and Journal of the Motherhood Initiative and in chapters within numerous anthologies. Her co-authored study, “Reflexivity and Practice in COVID-19: Qualitative Analysis of Student Responses to Improvisation in Their Research Methods Course,” won article of the year.

Jillian Tullis
Department of Communication Studies, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

Dr. Jillian Tullis is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her teaching and research interests focus on health communication, specifically communication about dying and death in healthcare settings. Dr. Tullis’ scholarship uses qualitative methods to study topics such as hospice team communication, tumor boards, spirituality, dying, death, quality of life, and a “good death.” In addition to an ongoing project about dying well, Tullis is also investigating the end of life care practices among enslaved Africans. Her research has appeared in numerous journals, and she has been invited to give talks about her work at Death Salon, UNESCO’s Futures Literacy Summit, and the Annual Death, Dying, and Disposal conference in England. She has appeared on The Death Studies podcast and Johns Hopkins’ Public Health On Callpodcast.

Michelle Walter
Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia

Michelle Walter is Teaching Specialist and Lecturer in the faculty of Education and the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. Her research explores experiences of mental illness in academia from a lived experience, mad studies perspective and draws on a poststructuralist feminist lens. She has a special interest in autoethnography and arts-based methods and the role of teaching in supporting tertiary student mental health. She is currently researching undergraduate students’ sense of belonging to university.

 

Editorial Office

Teresa Carrara
Managing Editor

Teresa graduated with honors from the University of Pavia in Applied and Theoretical Linguistics after earning a BA in Modern Languages and Cultures at the same university. After graduation, she obtained an internship at the National University of Galway, Eire, where she worked at the Italian Department, followed by a similar experience at Speexx Digital Publishing, in Pavia. As a Managing Editor at PAGEPress, she is responsible for several journals for which she coordinates the publishing phases. Her goal is to ensure cooperation between the authors of the papers, the editors-in-chief, and the reviewers in order to achieve complete satisfaction of all the parts.

Claudia Castellano
Production Editor

Claudia began her career as Art Director for various press and advertising agencies, developing brands and advertisements for private companies and public societies. Experience gained in these organizations has allowed her to fully develop her skills and expertise in the use of the major graphic tools and software. Today, she is responsible for the layout of more than 30 journals and for the PAGEPress corporate image.