Emily K. Brunson
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About Emily
Brunson's research focuses on health care access and decision-making. Overarching themes in Brunson's writings include how policies, social structure (including class and racial inequalities), social networks and personal experience combine to produce health outcomes for individuals. Brunson has consulted with national, state, and local organizations including the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), the Association of Immunization Managers (AIM), the Washington State Immunization Social Marketing Planning Team and the Hays County Food Bank. Brunson currently serves as a founding board member of Capacity Catalyst, a non-profit that links social science students to local and national internship opportunities.
Contributions
Why Unvaccinated Children are Not Always a Matter of Simple Parental Choice
In the News
Publications
Identifies points in individual parents' decision-making processes where parents are particularly open to receiving information and advice from health care providers. Provides a mechanism for providers to identify parents who may be particularly receptive to pro-vaccination conversations and thus have the capacity to make providers' efforts at promoting vaccination more effective.
Explores how the implementation of the Affordable Care Act impacted three women living without health insurance in Hays County, Texas. Notes how this policy was differentially experienced by the women based on their social class.
Reviews expert-vetted, model practices in risk and crisis communication. Includes in-depth case studies of communication successes and failures during four recent public health emergencies: the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the 2001 anthrax letter attacks.
Considers Medicaid expansion in an ethnographic context. Highlights the personal impacts of health care access or the lack thereof. Considers how qualitative perspectives like the one provided are often dismissed by researchers in traditionally quantitative disciplines and what implications of this are in terms of policy development and implementation.
Examines the impacts of social networks, social media, and traditional media on parents' vaccination decisions. Suggests that the people parents speak to/interact with have the greatest impact on the vaccination decisions parents ultimately make.
Illustrates communication dilemmas concerning medical countermeasures that could plausibly emerge in the not-so-distant future. Provides users, both individually and in discussion with others, the opportunity to mentally "rehearse" responses in order to avert comparable communication dilemmas in the future.