Angela Cooke-Jackson Creates Digital Health Manual

Communication Studies Professor Angela Cooke-Jackson is putting her expertise in health communication into practice in the Boston community with a new social media collaboration between high-risk youth and Emerson students. Cooke-Jackson’s students will shadow young Bostonians and film their stories. The films will become the basis for pages on particular health issues in a digital health manual. The films and health information will be complemented by links to lead users to more detailed information.

When a young person needs information on health issues relevant to them, including depression, abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, or drinking, “the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health have really informative sites,” said Cooke-Jackson. “But when you go to them, you have to know what you’re looking for. They are not really places a young layperson is going to visit. I found there was an absence of really good information that was age-appropriate and relevant.”

The project recently received a $15,000 grant from the Reebok Foundation and Cooke-Jackson hopes to use her knowledge, student creativity, and health communication expertise to ensure that important and relevant health information reaches young people through the digital platforms they are comfortable using.