Jakob Jensen Receives NCA Golden Anniversary Monograph Award - Department of Communication

Dr. Jakob Jensen received the National Communication Association (NCA) Golden Anniversary Monograph Award for his article, “Comparing tailored and narrative worksite interventions at increasing colonoscopy adherence in adults 50–75: A randomized controlled trial,” which was published in Social Science & Medicine in 2014.

This is a top award in the field, evidenced by its description on the NCA website: “The Golden Anniversary Monograph Awards are presented to the most outstanding scholarly monograph(s) published during the previous calendar year.” Dr. Jensen’s award-winning piece is a co-authored work (which includes among the co-authors recent University of Utah graduate student Melinda Krakow) that compared communication strategies that could increase adherence to colorectal cancer screening recommendations.

The study compared narrative messages (stories about people similar to participants who overcome barriers) and tailored messages (personalized messages) and their influence on whether participants were more likely to get colonoscopies. Ultimately, Dr. Jensen et al. discovered that narrative messages are more effective at increasing the likelihood that participants will get screened for colorectal cancer. Read Dr. Jensen's article here.