Topic Ideas

I am currently a sophomore planning on majoring in Health Information Management. The field is compromised of a mixture of healthcare (medicine), business, and technology so there are many areas in which risk communication can be examined.

The first area I am interested in exploring has to do with Healthcare Management directly. It is very important to have adequate ways to handle and input patient data or information within a healthcare facility. Everything must be handled efficiently and correctly to make sure that patients are provided with the appropriate care. It is a person?s health and well being that is relying on a health care professional to make sure that the patient is provided with the proper medical attention and having proper and up to date patient records is the first step, especially in times of an emergency.

My second area is a little bit more general, but still connected to healthcare. I find that an important issue to communicate risk to a majority of the population is smoking. It may seem like a minor issue but tobacco is a cause in complications and deaths to so many people. There already are organizations focused on tobacco awareness, such as TRUTH, that have effective advertisements but it does not seem to be reaching enough people. That would be an area I might be interested in looking into further throughout this semester.

Lastly, during my time so far at Pitt, aside from Health Information Management I have developed a keen interest in learning about the African continent, culture, and history. In my brief observations I have seen so many issues that need our immediate attention. One in particular is the AIDS situation that is taking the lives of millions of people at a time. The death toll is rising dramatically daily. In my readings, it seems like not much effort is going into AIDS awareness to assist the ongoing crisis. The social aspect of the region does not aid in halt in the spread of the disease. It seems like they are in dire need of an interjection, and for a plan to be formed to stop the disaster. The lack of education and risk communication in the parts of Africa that are suffering is allowing the people there to live in constant grief, if they even live at all. I would like to further explore one or all of these issues this semester to help me to understand them more, and also to understand Risk Communication better in general.