Dialectical Tensions Associated with Health Advocacy.

In this piece I narrate the lived dialectical tensions I experienced and embodied as a health advocate for my daughter during her stay in the pediatric intensive care unit: emotionality-rationality and presence-absence. Ultimately, I argue that "metacommunication" (Tracy, 2004) is one strategy that can help health advocates recast these tensions as complementary rather than contradictory in nature, with the aim of empowering these advocates to live more productively within them.

Courtesy Stigma and Social Support: An Exploration of Fathers' Buffering Strategies and Blocking Rationalizations.

This study extends scholarship on stigma management communication and social support by exploring the experiences of fathers of children living with a rare health condition, Sturge-Weber Syndrome. Findings from this interview-based interpretive study reveal that fathers assuaged the negative effects of stigma on their children-and courtesy stigma on themselves-by employing buffering strategies, including reactive and preemptive information sharing, preparatory conversations, and support blocking. Further, fathers offered three rationalizations for their blocking behaviors-reasoning that to accept support would violate social norms, as well as privacy expectations and that accepting support was not worth the effort (social exchange). These findings encourage scholars to continue to upend predominant constructions of masculinity and also call to question prevailing assumptions about the relationship between technology and privacy.

On Becoming an Involuntary Member in the Antepartum Unit.

In this essay, I articulate the ways in which my scholarship and personal life collided when I became an involuntary member in the antepartum unit of a major university hospital. I draw on research examples taken from my dissertation work in prison and my time in the hospital to illustrate the interconnectedness of these involuntary experiences. After I share these stories, I offer a brief interlude to reflect on the meaningfulness of approaching membership from a continuum-based perspective and the relative implications for health communication scholars, before ending with an articulation how this experience brought me to a more crystallized view of involuntary membership.

A meta-analysis of disclosure of one's HIV-positive status, stigma and social support.

This study provides an analysis of the relationships among perceived stigma, reported disclosure and perceived social support for those living with HIV. The meta-analytic summary of 21 studies (4,104 participants) showed, as predicted, a positive, heterogeneous correlation between disclosure and social support (r = .159), a negative, heterogeneous correlation between stigma and social support (r = -.344) and a negative, homogenous correlation between stigma and disclosure (r = -.189). The heterogeneity of the first two relationships indicates the presence of moderators, which may include participants' age and publications' year.