Jack J. Valenti School of Communication

Felicia obtained her Ph.D. in Communication with a focus on health communication from Texas A&M University.  She is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston under the leadership of associate professor and director Dr. Jen Vardeman.  Her postdoc research focuses on communication and messaging centering women's health issues (e.g., pelvic floor disorders, menopause, maternal health).  Felicia’s dissertation, Capturing Black Maternal Voices: A Culture-Centered Approach to Understanding the Health Care Communicative Experiences of African American Mothers, speaks to her intersectional research on culturally centered communication in healthcare.  Specifically, she studies the role that cultural factors (e.g., historical mistrust in the healthcare system, unhealthy diets, racial biases) play in African Americans' decisions to engage in preventive behaviors towards self-care.  Felicia passionately focuses on improving communication between doctors and their patients and how addressing barriers related to the social determinants of health, such as implicit bias in medical care, can mitigate increasing rates of health disparities.  Felicia has an MA in Communication (Public Relations) from the University of Houston and a BBA and MBA in Accounting from Sam Houston State University State in Huntsville, Texas.  She has been instructing at the collegiate level since 2010.  Felicia is a native Houstonian and has two amazing daughters.  

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