Online Program

LI Course
Oral

Statement of Purpose and Institute Overview: The purpose of this course is to provide participants with communication skills and strategies to enhance the effectiveness of relationships when engaging hard-to-reach and underserved communities. Based on online qualitative surveying and a systematic literature review, this course fills a gap in training by providing practitioners and researchers multilevel communication concepts and strategies to enable them to better partner and collaborate with those groups most challenged by social determinants, including those spaces that are most dilapidated. During this course you will learn how to: 1) Explain how community engagement is a communicative effort; 2) Describe how communication fundamentally impacts the basic principles, values, and ethics of community engagement; 3) Evaluate the impact of personal social perception on communication strategies to build relationships diverse partners; 4) Identify communication strategies that undermine effective building and maintenance of relationships with severely underserved groups; 5) Demonstrate how a social ecological approach can be used to characterize communication in community engagement; 6) Explain what communication strategies help foster cohesion in relationships with extremely diverse partners; 7) Discuss the application of an ecological communication approach to individual community engagement efforts with hard-to-reach and severely underserved groups; and 8) Assess how understanding community engagement as a communicative act can assist in public health efforts related to the Affordable Care Act. Throughout this course communication approaches and strategies are used to examine case studies from the presenters' research for participants to read and brainstorm relational solutions in small groups that will inform the larger discussion. We also engage participants with communication-related self-assessments so participants can reflect and identify strengths and weakness. A role-playing activity and interactive activities are integrated. Open discussion and mini lectures are also utilized. For each presentation teaching methodology is outlined as it differs for each phase of the course to ensure skill-building, knowledge gain, and practical application of material. The presenters have a total of 38 years conducting community engaged researched with extremely challenged communities; and have been teaching communication in community engagement 1999. This course is fundamentally about health equity with a concern for communities aligned with the Affordable Health Act, which supports community engagement in health promotion. This course addresses a rather large gap in training, how to build and maintain relationships in community engagement by foregrounded very specific communication approaches and strategies.

Session Objectives: Describe how communication fundamentally impacts the basic principles, values, and ethics of community engagement. Evaluate the impact of personal social perception on communication strategies to build relationships with diverse partners. Assess how understanding community engagement as a communicative act can assist in public health efforts related to the Affordable Care Act.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)