Augustana College senior Kidist Tsige presented her public health senior inquiry, “Beyond the White Coat,” in the Gavle rooms. The workshop focused on misinformation and culturally aware health communication.
Tsige combined her majors of public health and communication studies, along with her minor in biology, into a workshop to educate the campus community on Wednesday, April 1. Tsige named the presentation “Beyond the White Coat” after her experiences in her hometown Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She felt that, due to many stereotypes, only people in white coats were taken seriously, and she is working to give everyone a voice.
“It’s not really these people that are highly educated, or it’s not really the scientists that are really being affected,” Tsige said. “It’s the people that do not have access to education, it’s the people that do not have access to healthcare, but they’re the ones that are shunned away.”
The workshop consisted of an informational presentation and two activities for students to work with their tables. One of the activities challenged students to work through a difficult situation in a hypothetical healthcare setting.
Some of the scenarios provided were based on healthcare stories that Tsige heard while working with the American Dental Association as an intern this past summer. Tsige encouraged the audience to ask the client questions when faced with difficult scenarios.
The second activity challenged attendees to look at a sheet with medical terms and circle the ones that were confusing. Tsige provided this activity to show that without provider-to-patient-communication, medical terms can be confusing to many.
First-Year Yursa Omer participated in the activity and understood how medical terms can be confusing.
“She said how words are complicated most of the time until the provider explains it,” Omer said. “I’ve experienced it too, you know it’s so overwhelming.”
The workshop was open to the Augustana community, and students who attended received a certification in pre-health communications. The workshop brought in a variety of students for many different reasons. Junior Shakira Wade is majoring in psychology and is interested in learning more about health communication.
“Mental health is still a big part of your well-being in general, and I think there’s a lot of things that are miscommunicated throughout mental health and how it affects people,” Wade said. “I thought it would be good to learn a little bit more about how I could communicate better with others about mental health.”
The public health program allows seniors to choose a passion project that ties back into their internship that is required during a student’s junior year. All public health senior inquiries can be viewed at the Celebration of Learning on May 6.
