Laura Pigozzi

Title: Visiting Assistant Professor

University: Northwestern University

Description of Work:

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Cook Family Writing Program at Northwestern University with Affiliate Faculty status in the School of Nursing, University of Minnesota and Affiliate Faculty status at the Center for Community Health Equity, DePaul University/Rush University.

My research interests include technical communication, cross-cultural communication, health communication, and issues of consent. This research is informed by my training in bioethics and is a response to health disparities experienced by many of the 55.3 million Latinx in the U.S., especially those who are unauthorized. I have done research involving comprehension of existing healthcare materials created for this population as well as in-¬depth research on comprehension of clinical trial consent information. The work incorporates rhetorical, quantitative, and qualitative analyses to build explanatory, interdisciplinary theories to contribute to these often understudied areas.

My current project, which is just beginning, will examine the health consequences of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention on unauthorized Latinx immigrants and on their families using rhetorical analysis and grounded theory. The research will be focused on detention centers in Illinois and be facilitated by activist organizations based in Chicago, IL.

This research also contributes to a practical goal of accessible, usable, and effective healthcare communication. To that end I recently published Caring for and Understanding Latinx Patients in Health Care Settings, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London.