How culture influences people’s understanding of health, and their adoption of different preventative behaviors has been my long-term research interest. I study how different cultural groups understand health, diseases, and health behaviors and explain such differences through a cultural lens.

My research examines the health experiences and communication of marginalized groups. Starting from a critical perspective and a concern for voiceless groups, I combined critical theories with innovative research methods such as the photovoice method to allow members of underserved groups to express their views, share their experiences, and take a leading role in identifying community-based solutions.

For instance, by asking African American individuals to take pictures about their experiences of living with heart diseases and talk about these pictures, my study highlights these individuals’ remarkable agency in leading a healthy lifestyle and managing their heart diseases. Such agency is enabled and constrained by structural determinants such as socioeconomic status, insurance, discrimination, and knowledge (e.g. York & Tang, 2021).

During the COVID pandemic, my team studied how middle-aged and older African Americans use information during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic through interviews.

• Tang, L., York, F., & Zou, W. (2021). Information use during COVID-19: An interview study of African Americans. Frontiers in Public Health, 9:709416.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.709416

Co-cultural Communication

My research also contributes to the understanding of how marginalized groups communicate with dominant groups by utilizing and further developing the co-culture theory, which is a critical theory of intercultural communication. I studied how gay men in China come out and how gay men’s wives communicate with their husbands and other family members. These studies further developed the co-culture theory by identifying new co-culture communication strategies and further explaining the use of co-culture strategies at the intersection of gender, sexual orientation, and culture. Here are my two articles utilizing and further developing the co-cultural theory

• Bie, B., & Tang, L. (2016). Chinese gay men’s coming out narratives: Connecting social relationship to co-cultural theory. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(4), 351-367. doi: 10.1080/17513057.2016.1142602 [Summary] [Full article]
• Tang, L., Meadows, C.Z., & Li, H. (2020). How gay men’s wives in China practice co-cultural communication: Culture, identity, and sensemaking. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 13(1), 13-31. doi: 10.1080/17513057.2019.1569252 [Summary] [Full article]