The Coastal Carolina University is developing a Master's degree program in Health Communication to begin in Fall 2017. The program aims to provide training in health reporting, writing and marketing not currently offered elsewhere in South Carolina. A committee of professors worked to design a program drawing on their diverse expertise to offer students a fuller understanding of communication and health communication. The degree was approved in 2015 and the committee continues working on course design and a proposal to meet approval requirements and launch the program on schedule in 2017.

1. Falicya Crace
Committee hopes to offer health communication master degree program
Coastal Carolina University is set to offer a master degree program in Health
Communication in fall 2017.
Coastal Carolina in spring of 2015 was contemplating on adding another master degree
program to their selection by offering another opportunity in the School of Humanities and Fine
arts. This was going to be a major step forward for the Master degree program within the School
of Humanities and Fine Arts with the school only offering two master degree programs currently.
Undergraduate studies in health communication has only been offered at CCU for about
ten years and will soon include a graduate degree, due in part because of its popularity with
students.
“There are several master degree programs in communication only in South Carolina; we are
offering something that is not already available. We felt that Health Communication was general
enough to allow participation from many of our faculty members, but specific enough for
students to gain practical knowledge for a current or future career path, said member of the
Health Communication master’s degree program committee,” Dr. Kyle Holody.
The health communication master’s degree was approved by the board of trustees of
Coastal Carolina University on August 7, 2015. According to the board of trustee’s newsletter,
the Health communication degree was developed in response to the high occurrence of health-
related issues in South Carolina, which ranks in the top 10 states nationwide for obesity, diabetes
and infectious diseases. Unlike health promotion and other related disciplines, health

2. communication focuses on tools and strategies that target mass media and markets to facilitate
positive health behavioral changes.
Dr. Sharon Thompson, the Health Promotion Program Coordinator at Coastal Carolina,
states in a current newsletter that one of the major focuses of the health prevention programs is
“any aspect of public health.” Students in this program learn not only about the health needs and
problems of communities, but also how to plan, implement, and evaluate programs to address
those issues. The Communication aspect of the program trains students in health reporting,
writing, or marketing.
Dr. Holody states that once the program has been approved by the communication
department, the CCU Board of Trustees, the dean of the Edwards College of Humanities and
Fine Arts and faculty across the university in the form of Academic Affairs the program then has
to be approved by the state of South Carolina's Commission on Higher Education, and the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. There are also a few
other stages of approval that happen within each of these steps, so the program will be carefully
thought out by the time it officially begins.
“Many of our students have told us that they wished we had an MA program and that
they usually have to move and find a new school to pursue graduate studies”, the Chair of the
communication MA program committee, Dr. Anderson said. “We hope to provide them with an
opportunity to stay here at CCU because of the response we have received when we have asked
our students if they would be interested in an MA program here, which has been that they are
very excited about the thought of having a program.”

3. During the spring of 2015, a large committee of professors was working hard to come up
with a proposal for the Health Communication master degree program. The committee was
working hard to design the way this new and upcoming program could possibly look like, that
included Dr. Holody, Dr. Flynn, Dr. Craig, Dr. Fondren, Dr. Breede, Dr. Weinhold, Dr. Sanjines,
Dr. Bergstrom and Dr. Anderson. The committee has been working diligently to come up with a
program that would offer the best options for students that enter the program.
“I can say that the majority of the first year class for the communication master degree
program will be made up of Coastal Carolina undergraduates”, said member of the committee,
Dr. Fondren.
The committee wanted to create a master degree program that would not be like
traditional master degree programs for Communication. According to Dr. Holody there are no
other schools in South Carolina that offer a full master’s degree in health communication.
Clemson University and the University of South Carolina have health communication
certificates or concentrations in their graduate programs, but those are options rather than full
degrees in the health communication area. The faculty members in the CCU program have a
wide variety of expertise areas, so students will understand communication and health
communication specifically, fuller and more completely than students who are part of a program
at another university.
Currently the members of the committee are working on designing the various courses
that will be offered in the program and are writing a well-researched proposal for the program
overall. These steps will meet the requirements for most of the approval bodies mentioned

4. above, once the proposal is complete; it will just be a matter of addressing any concerns that
arise at each level rather than developing new materials for each new step.
The committee hopes to have the program up and running for students to apply in fall of
2017.