ESC Faculty Profile
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Dr. Deborah Ballard-Reisch Joined Elliott School in 2007 |
Dr. Deborah Ballard-Reisch (Ph.D. Bowling Green State University) is the Kansas Health Foundation Distinguished Chair in Strategic Communication and a professor at Wichita State University. She joins the Elliott School of Communication from the University of Nevada, Reno where she served in a variety of capacities in the School of Public Health and the Speech and Theater Department. Dr. Ballard-Reisch was co-architect of the strategic plan that initiated UNR's cutting edge School of Public Health grounded in an ecological approach to health emphasizing communication, ethics, a lifespan approach, and culture and diversity.
Professor Ballard-Reisch's research interests include family and couple communication, strategic health and risk communication, and international women's health. She is the author of over 40 referred international, national and regional journal articles and book chapters and more than 20 public health and population reports. In the last 5 years, Dr. Ballard-Reisch has received over $400,000 in grants and contracts to conduct grounded strategic health communication research in the areas of bioterrorism risk communication and public health preparedness, healthy behavior change, and effective communication strategies with utility consumers. Dr. Ballard-Reisch co-edited a volume on Communication and Sex Role Socialization, as well as special issues of the Journal of Family Communication (on family research methodology) and Women and Language (on globalization and feminism).
Of her research, Dr. Ballard-Reisch states, "In my work, I take an ecological approach to strategic communication emphasizing the many often interdependent contexts in which communication messages are created and the varied methods through which messages can be delivered to most effectively reach desired audiences and accomplish intended goals." In summing up insights from her scholarship, Dr. Ballard-Reisch concludes "My work over the last decade has focused on going to communities and talking to people about the best ways to get messages to them, who they want to hear from, what they want the messages to look and sound like, what they are interested in knowing. I have learned that in a crisis, one size does not fit all and to meet the needs of diverse populations within communities, different strategies are required to get messages across in an effective and timely manner."
Dr. Ballard-Reisch has been an international educator for 20 years teaching and working with judges and health professionals from more than 20 countries. She has taught throughout the U.S., and in Canada, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, and Zimbabwe. Her areas of specialty include judicial education, communication, leadership, gender, culture, and advocacy. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Russia in 1996-1997 and received a Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Award in 2001 to study women's health in the Tatarstan Republic of Russia.
In her free time, Deborah loves to travel with her children Stefan and Alyssa. She also enjoys horseback riding, tennis, hiking, reading, fine food, music, movies, and theater.
Room 207, Elliott Hall
(316) 978-6066
deborah.ballard-reisch@wichita.edu