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Research on Health Discourse ICIC's research on Health Discourse is successfully providing linguistic solutions to problems arising in the processing, comprehension, and interpretation of health-related communication. The center's team of applied linguists, discourse analysts, physicians, pharmacologists, sociologists, intercultural specialists, and communication theorists are working in groups on research as varied as prescription medication labeling, medication adherence, physician-patient interaction, and the effect of health beliefs on management of chronic diseases. One large project currently underway and funded by the Eli Lilly Foundation, involves the interviewing of type 2 diabetics. The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of literacy, patient life attitudes, health beliefs, and demographic factors upon adherence to prescribed medication. By June 2008, ICIC had completed 43 interviews, yielding a wealth of both quantitative data on demographics, medication adherence, diabetes knowledge, and literacy practices; and qualitative data from recorded patient narratives of their diagnosis, treatment, and experiences with self-management. Analyses are being directed into three areas: 1. the relationships among information sources, knowledge creation, and action as determined by literacy practices and patients' own accounts; 2. identification of linguistic realizations of constructs such as locus of control, agency, and affect, and their relation to adherence; and 3. examination of linguistic and cultural differences between American-born and immigrant patients in health literacy practices and related adherence and non-adherence. The center is completing its first year of the Lilly Foundation-funded research this summer, and in the second year of the three-year grant, will expand the sample population to include non-native speakers of English, especially to study the literacy and information habits of those immigrant groups best represented in central Indiana. Publications and Presentations Research Team members and consultants: Ulla Connor, ICIC Kathryn Lauten, ICIC Julie Belz, IUPUI English for Academic Purposes Department Beth Goering, IUPUI Communication Studies Department Heidi Hamilton, Georgetown University Paris Roach, IU School of Medicine James Wolf, Survey Research Center at IUPUI
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