Chan Thai
B.A. in Mass Communication and Social Welfare (Double Major), University of California, Berkeley, 2003
MPH in Community Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, 2008
PhD in Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2014
Post-doctoral Fellowship, National Cancer Institute, 2014-2016
Chan Thai teaches courses on communication and technology, health communication, and the strategic design of communication campaigns to promote behavior change. Her areas of research include measuring the effectiveness of media literacy interventions, designing and evaluating nutrition education interventions, cancer communication, and using national data sets to understand population level health behaviors.
Chan Thai joined the Department of Communication at Santa Clara University in 2016. Her research focuses on the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of communication campaigns to promote healthy behaviors ranging from interactions with the media to dietary behavior. She applies mixed methods approaches to gather data to inform campaign design and assess campaign effectiveness. Her broader research interests include health and cancer communication, health behaviors, and health psychology. She has published her research in communication journals as well as public health and medical science journals. She greatly enjoys teaching students inside and outside of the classroom and strives to design courses that balance theoretical concepts with real world application using a variety of pedagogical strategies and techniques, while also encouraging students to learn about their own working and learning styles.