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Storytelling and Human Health: An Introduction to Global Health Communication and Media Innovation

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SiNY 117 - Storytelling and Human Health: An Introduction to Global Health Communication and Media Innovation

Health and illness are integral parts of the human condition – and storytelling is one of the oldest and most powerful approaches to documenting and sharing people’s experiences of health and disease. This course examines various approaches to the use of health storytelling to boost empathy, reduce stigma, convey science-based health messages and even examine our own experiences with health and disease. We will explore existing evidence-based frameworks that can be integrated into the story development process, including human-centered design, the use of narratives in health communication, entertainment-education and how we can apply principles of universal design for learning in our efforts to engage diverse audiences through compelling and scalable health storytelling.

This course fulfills the Creative Expression (CE) WAYS requirement.

Meet the Instructor(s)

Maya Adam, M.D.

Dr. Adam is the Director of Health Media Innovation and a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine. She creates video-based entertainment-education on topics related to maternal child health, nutrition and disease prevention. She has designed and produced online educational content for the Stanford School of Medicine for use in their preclinical programs, continuing medical education programs and global health promotion efforts. She is the Faculty Lead for the Global Child Health Media Initiative and the creator of eight massive open online courses reaching more than a million learners around the world. Adam is principal investigator on two randomized-controlled trials investigating the impact of digital global health education interventions on health-promoting behaviors. Her research is conducted in collaboration with the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health in Heidelberg, Germany. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Innovation in Global Health and the author of Food, Love, Family: A Practical Guide to Child Nutrition.