Rebekah Nagler

Rebekah Nagler is Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts and an associate professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. She is also affiliate faculty at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and a member of the Masonic Cancer Center. Professor Nagler’s research examines the effects of routine exposure to health information in the media, with a particular focus on conflicting and often controversial information about cancer prevention and screening. She has additional research interests in communication and health equity. Professor Nagler’s work has been funded by agencies and organizations including the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society, and from January 2014-July 2017, she was supported by a career development award through the University of Minnesota's NIH-funded Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH) program. Prior to her arrival at the University of Minnesota, Professor Nagler was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Harvard Education Program in Cancer Prevention at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where she worked with Professors K. “Vish” Viswanath and Karen Emmons. She received her Ph.D. in Communication and her BA in the History and Sociology of Science, both from the University of Pennsylvania.

Educational Background

• Postdoctoral Research Fellow: Harvard Education Program in Cancer Prevention, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, 2010-2013.
• PhD: Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2010.
• BA: History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2002.

Specialties

• Health communication
• Cancer communication
• Communication and health equity
• Media effects

Publications

• Nagler, R.H., Vogel, R.I., Gollust, S.E., Rothman, A.J., Fowler, E.F., & Yzer, M.C. (2020). Public perceptions of conflicting information surrounding COVID-19: Results from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults. PLOS ONE, 15(10), e0240776. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240776
• Gollust, S.E., Vogel, R.I., Rothman, A., Yzer, M., Fowler, E.F., &Nagler, R.H. (2020). Americans’ perceptions of disparities in COVID-19 mortality: Results from a nationally-representative survey. Preventive Medicine, 141, 106278. DOI: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.106278
• Shi, W., Nagler, R.H., Gollust, S.E., & Fowler, E.F. (2019). Predictors of women’s awareness of the benefits and harms of mammography screening and associations with confusion, ambivalence, and information seeking. Health Communication. DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2019.1687129
• Clark, D., Nagler, R.H., & Niederdeppe, J. (2019). Confusion and nutritional backlash from news media exposure to contradictory information about carbohydrates and dietary fats. Public Health Nutrition, 22, 3336-3348. DOI: 10.1017/S1368980019002866
• Nagler, R.H., Fowler, E.F., Marino, N., Mentzer, K., & Gollust, S.E. (2019). The evolution of controversy about mammography screening: A content analysis of four publicized screening recommendations, 2009-2016. Women’s Health Issues, 29(1), 87-95. DOI:10.1016/j.whi.2018.09.005
• Saulsberry, L., Fowler, E.F., Nagler, R.H., & Gollust, S.E. (2019). Perceptions of politicization and HPV vaccine policy support. Vaccine, 37, 5121-5128. DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.05.062
• Nagler, R.H., Yzer, M.C., & Rothman, A.J. (2019). Effects of media exposure to conflicting information about mammography: Results from a population-based survey experiment. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 53, 896-908. DOI: 10.1093/abm/kay098