Staff Profile
Sarah Keller, Ph.D. – Research Scientist
Over the past six years, Dr. Keller has developed a service learning curriculum that has been well attended by students and enthusiastically received by the community. Student support has been demonstrated by ongoing enrollment in the new courses from diverse departments, such as Marketing, Health Administration, Health & Human Performance and Communication & Theatre at Montana State University Billings (MSU-B). Community support has been demonstrated by the ongoing sponsorship and grant support from the St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation, BikeNet Board, the American Advertising Federation, collaborating media professionals, the Zonta Club of Billings, and at the state-level, with the Montana Department of Transportation. Significant university support includes dean’s awards in two colleges, administrative support from the MSU-B Foundation, and the Winston & Helen Cox and Walter & Charlotte Pippenger Awards. The academic community nationally has recognized the importance of these campaigns and curriculum development through accepted book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Keller began this process at Emerson College, where she taught in a master’s program in Health Communication. The existing curriculum included a course on Social Marketing that allowed her to apply professional experiences from overseas entertainment education and health communication campaigns with Population Communication International, USAID, and Family Health International. She also developed an undergraduate course at Emerson entitled Media for Social Change, in which students divided into groups, selected unique health behavior change objectives, and partnered with community organizations to develop media interventions in their identified areas. Results from this course produced focus group data on secondary sources of tobacco that were used by the Newton, MA health department to develop interventions, and interviews with nurses on hepatitis C transmission that were used by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to develop health action plans.
The supportive environment at MSU-Billings allowed her to develop this service learning curriculum further. Today, it involves a cluster of new and previous courses, including COMT 481/581 Media for Social Change, COMT 480/580 Health Communication, MKT 443 Applied Marketing Communication, and MKT 343 Integrated Marketing Communication. These courses have collectively produced three mass media campaigns (with a fourth underway) in the last three years to promote different public health behavior & attitude change objectives. The courses include: 1) “Get Tested!” to promote HIV testing; 2) “Open Your Eyes” to promote awareness of domestic violence; and 3) “Go Play!” to promote trails and bikeways. Each campaign has been supported by external grants and in-kind services from area broadcast and media professionals, solicited by the professor.
It is Dr. Keller’s goal to enhance the documentation and evaluation of impact for these campaigns. Currently, they are intermittently evaluated through grant-funded research with collaboration from graduate students in the Public Relations Masters Program, the Yellowstone City-County Health Department, and Research and Creative Endeavor (RACE). Results have anecdotally demonstrated successful outcomes for the first two campaigns, with data remaining to be collected for the third, still underway. Community impact has mostly been documented qualitatively through publicity, widespread recognition and interpersonal commentary.
Research on campaign evaluations, baseline data and applied, interdisciplinary educational approach have fueled her recent scholarship, resulting in papers appearing in the Journal of Marketing Education, Nursing & Health Sciences, American Communication Journal, and Health Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices by Nova Press.
Her ongoing research agenda centers on examining the use of mass media to promote health behavior and attitude change on a variety of public health topics.
• An evaluation of a mass media campaign to promote awareness and prevention of domestic violence in Yellowstone and Carbon Counties.
• An evaluation of a mass media campaign to promote HIV testing in Yellowstone County.
• An evaluation of a mass media campaign to promote walking, biking and running to work or school in the greater Billings community.
• An examination of the impact of service learning on student outcomes in marketing and communication.
• An assessment of perceptions and behavior as they relate to physical activity, obesity prevention, and other health areas.