My name is Kirsten Pool and I am a PhD student in the department of communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a researcher, I situate myself at the intersect of interpersonal and health communication. At the heart of this intersect is an interest in unpacking the dialectic relationship between social support provision and the experience of trauma. Due to the uncomfortable, unknown, and often indescribable nature of trauma, support providers can often struggle with designing good support messages that simultaneously encourage healthy coping behaviors and relational satisfaction. The overarching goal to this line of research is two-fold: (a) to produce strategies that support providers can use and (b) to develop measurement tools to adequately and consistently assess support provision behaviors within the context of trauma.
R.A.P.P.O.R.T. 