Sam Mendez is a Ph.D. candidate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They have a master’s in media studies and a background in animation. Their dissertation is bridging natural language processing methods with media studies theory to expand the scope of health literacy research to better suit social media. Through this fellowship, Sam hopes to use examples from media, technology, and the arts to imagine the future of health communication. Their goal is to help advance health equity through more rigorous communication research and more equitable communication.
“Party’s Over” is a blog and video series that asks: what do we do now? With issues of trust and misinformation more prominent than ever, it’s clear we need to rethink health communication. In this series, we’ll look at real examples of online communities, community-based methods, and innovative use of technology to imagine what that might mean.
Sam’s blog posts focus on health communication, media, technology, and arts. Read the posts from their “Party’s Over” series for the 2023 BCPH Thought Leadership for Public Health Fellowship below.
You can find Samuel talking about health communication, health literacy, and video games: @samuelanimates on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, Tiktok, and on the scicomm.xyz Mastodon server.
The mission of the Boston Congress of Public Health Thought Leadership for Public Health Fellowship (BCPH Fellowship) seeks to:
It is guided by an overall vision to provide a platform, training, and support network for the next generation of public health thought leaders and public scholars to explore and grow their voice.