From Maine to California and with stops along the way in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and Washington, doctoral students and recent doctoral graduates are putting their research and Capstone projects “on the map.” Through radio “tours” and press releases running on a journalists’ newswire, PhD and doctor of nursing practice (DNP) students and grads are gaining valuable media exposure and experience.
Beginning last July, this new initiative led by the PhD and DNP program directors, Hae-Ran Han, RN, PhD, and Mary Terhaar, DNSc, RN, in collaboration with the School of Nursing Office of Marketing and Communications, matched the PhD research and DNP Capstone projects to special topics outlined in upcoming thematic wires. Themes ranged from back-to-school topics to infectious diseases and included child health, obesity, and diabetes. Press releases about their efforts were then distributed to 30,000 journalists throughout the world through Newswise, a top-rated newswire visited daily by journalists seeking research news, expert sources, and feature ideas.
Adding to the outreach, two popular releases receiving a total of nearly 5,000 views from journalists were picked for radio tours. DNP student Billinda Tebbenhoff and PhD student Janna Stephens went “on tour” via their telephones, conducting 11 radio interviews that aired 437 times on 149 stations across the U.S. and reached more than six million listeners. Their topics? Health-oriented apps for smartphones. In “Need to Reduce Stress? There’s an App for That,” Tebbenhoff outlined the use of virtual reality to reduce stress in college students. Stephens’ research focused on the use of smartphones and websites to combat the epidemic of childhood obesity in “Technology Can Trim Childhood Obesity.”