Emily Scheinfeld

Emily Scheinfeld is an assistant professor of Communication at Kennesaw State University. She received her PhD in Interpersonal Communication from The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests center on how adult children and their parents communicate about challenging or difficult health issues, including end of life, genetic testing, alcohol and drugs, the choice to be a donor. She is interested in examining how familial health communication differs from everyday family communication and the process of disclosure when attempting to seek out social support during these challenging health crises, and how that may impact stress and coping. She has presented at various regional, national, and international conferences and been published in Health Communication, Journal of Death and Dying, Health Behavior & Policy Review, American Journal of Health Behavior, Communication Yearbook, and American Journal of Infection Control.

She is currently working with colleagues across the country exploring the COVID-19 pandemic and how people coped with loss of everyday things, feeling guilty for experiencing grief over those losses, conflict with families over the pandemic (e.g., politics, masks, vaccines, racial unrest). She is also currently exploring how people experienced and managed grief over the death of a loved one when their normal mourning rituals were stripped from them. Emily is also examining how the use of social media has helped people both feel connected during isolation but also impacted our health behaviors, mental health, interpersonal relationships, and experience of FoMO (I.e., fear of missing out).