by Nathan Villasenor, Natalee Gonzalez, and Olivia Williams
The communication scholar our group chose to interview was Jasmine Phillips. She has a PhD in communications and is a professor here at Cal State Fullerton. The published study we decided to interview Dr. Phillips on was “A Community-Based Approach to HIV Prevention: Engaging Mayan Young Adults in Rural Guatemala“. Dr. Phillips and her team conducted their research in Santiago Atitlán, which is located in the Sololá state of Guatemala. They were inspired to do their research specifically on the Mayan people in Guatemala because they represent 40% of the country’s population and account for 20% of their HIV cases. An interesting point of this study was that, even though the rates of HIV within the Guatemalan community were growing, they were still very low. This led the research team to work backwards to justify the use of the population. The Mayan people have a lack of HIV knowledge and extremely limited access to medical treatment, making them vulnerable to a potential outbreak. The research aimed to raise awareness about HIV within their community.
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The Society for Communications Research 