Introducing Sociometrics

Sociometrics, newly added to the Penn Library e-resources, offers access to social-behavioral health science data, including social science health data sets, psychological tests, effective evidence-based prevention and treatment programs and multimedia health education resources.  Modules include:

Children's Emotional Disorders Effective Treatment Archive

Early Intervention Program Archive to Reduce Developmental Disability

Global HIV Archive

HIV RAP Interactive

HIV/AIDS Prevention Program Archive

Know the Risks: HIV Screening & Education

Know the Risks: Sexual Health Over 50

Program Archive on Sexuality, Health, & Adolescence

PsyTestAR: Psychological Test and Assessment Resource

SAHARA: HIV Prevention for African American Young Women

SiHLE: HIV Prevention for African American Teen Women

WILLOW: Secondary Prevention for African-American Women living with HIV

This resource is bought to us by the Sociometrics Corporation which you may already know from The Social Science Electronic Data Library (SSEDL) that provides a collection of robust data archives with more than 600 premier data sets and over 275,000 variables. You can access this collection at the Sociometrics site in addition to accessing it from the Library webpage by SEEDL.

Reducing Health Disparities in JOC

Communication Strategies to Reduce Health Disparities is the title of the Journal of Communication's special issue (February 2013, Volume 63:1). Edited by Nancy Grant Harrington (University of Kentucky), many of the journal's ten articles grew out of two preconferences in 2012, one at the International Communication Association, the other at the Kentucky Conference on Health Communication. The lead piece deals with the current state of knowledge on the content and effects of communication about health disparities in the mass media.  Other articles address intervention research, narrative practices, community-based eHealth strategies, and communication infrastructure theory in relation to reducing health disparities. The issue's case studies focus on HIV, the HPV vaccine, and hunger, a major if not the major marker of health disparity. The geography of this research ranges from Appalachia  and Tippecanoe Country, Indiana to West Bengal, India with Africa in between.

The journal is available from Penn Library e-resources.

Media/Materials Clearinghouse (M/MC)

The Media/Materials Clearinghouse (M/MC) is a repository for health communication materials from around the world--pamphlets, posters, audiotapes, videos, training materials, job aids, electronic media and other media/materials designed to promote public health. One can search its HEALTH COMMUNICATION MATERIALS DATABASE by country (128 I counted), subjects (such as AIDS, bed nets, blood pressure, chlamydia, dental heath, infant mortality, malaria, traffic safety--too many to count), and medium (from comic books to radio spots to wallet cards). There are over 150 languages to choose from as well.

Besides the database, the site also hosts a Health Communications Materials Network where communication specialists share ideas and information on public health communication.

An "In the Spotlight" features a new health campaign every month. This month's feature is a radio soap opera on body love:

BodyLove is the soap opera that is good for you. Developed by faculty and students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, BodyLove is a radio drama that reaches African American listeners with messages to promote healthy lifestyles. The program uses the technique of modeling healthy and unhealthy behaviors and their consequences. To date, 83 episodeshave been produced and broadcast on radio stations in Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. They can also be streamed on-demand from three stations in Birmingham, Alabama. Please visit www.bodylove.org for more information.