Nancy Muturi

By Dan Berkowitz Ph.D., Professor emeritus, UI SJMC 

Nancy Muturi grew up in the rural village of Mung’aria, Central Kenya (population <5000). Like many rural communities in Kenya, Mung’aria at that time did not have electricity, running water, or accessible roads. She walked each day for about 5km to school and back since there was no transportation, and most often it was after helping her parents milk the family cows, an experience that helped her develop a strong work ethic at an early age. Her academic career began in 1985 with a year of teaching secondary school in Kenya. Then, she moved to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, with about five million residents, where she earned a BA (1989) and a Master’s degree (1994) from the University of Nairobi. 

A daughter of teachers, she did not stop there.

In 1993, Muturi received a scholarship from the World Bank to study development communication at the University of Iowa. Coming from a small village and moving to a large city like Nairobi was challenging, but no more so than moving to Iowa City, where the method of teaching, and the style of life – leaving aside the Iowa winters – contrasted sharply with her previous life experiences.

Muturi completed her master’s in development communication and health, which led to her acceptance into the SJMC doctoral program. When it became time to develop a dissertation idea, Muturi decided to return to rural Kenya and study gender, health, and development communication. Her dissertation completed and defended in 2002, SJMC faculty member (and Hall of Fame member) Joe Ascroft helped find her first academic position in Kingston, Jamaica.

There Muturi took on the formidable task of designing and implementing an academic master’s program centered on behavior change communication. The program launched with 35 students from eight Caribbean nations and was taught with the aid of U.S. faculty brought in through the Fulbright Senior Specialist program. During that time, she also worked as a health communication specialist for the University of the West Indies HIV Response Program, which was funded by the European Union. After three years of teaching at the University of the West Indies and gaining experience in grant-funded project design and implementation, she accepted a faculty position at Kansas State University (2005).

And that is when Muturi began to impact our field.

By the time she had reached the rank of full professor in 2016, Muturi had authored or co-authored 45 refereed journal articles and nine book chapters, nearly all related to health communication, many with an international focus. Likewise, her nearly 50 refereed conference research papers were presented at key conferences such as the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the International Communication Association and the International Association of Mass Communication Research. Again, the bulk of her work concerned health communication in an international setting. Teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, Muturi has served on more than 75 graduate committees.

Some examples of her research show that Muturi often collaborated with other scholars. Her article with Issaka (2023) in the Howard Journal of Communications studied how African immigrants to the United States use social media and other communication tools to shape their motivations for the prevention of communicable diseases. By applying Protective Motivation Theory, Muturi also studied how communication use among African immigrants affected perceptions of risk, seriousness and efficacy of disease prevention behaviors.

Many of Muturi’s publications draw on social science theory to enhance the richness of the work. Her study with Cozma (2021) for example, drew on survey data to examine how social media use becomes relevant to knowledge about COVID-19. This time, Muturi and her collaborator again drew on Protection Motivation Theory, finding that threat severity perceptions mediated the negative impact of social media use during the pandemic. Overall, the study found that risk communication is most effective when it connects to the audiences’ self-efficacy and perceptions of severity.

Another health communication-related study appeared in Indian Journal of Public Health (Kasuma, et al., 2023). It examined stigmatization of the widespread health problem of obesity. In particular, the study centered on how prevalent this stigma appears among nutrition and dietetic students. This was indeed a problem among this group. The research group highlighted the finding that weight bias is an apparent issue among students enrolling in health-related programs, a bias that could impact clinical and community settings. 

At times, Muturi has taken her research beyond the U.S. borders. For example, she examined perceived risk of HIV and AIDS among young adults in Kenya. Risk assessment was placed within the context of alcohol use in relation to physical and mental health. As a foundation, Muturi again drew on Protection Motivation Theory and Social Cognitive Theory. A survey of 402 adults in their early 20s examined how alcohol use can affect risk perception and self-efficacy in relation to sexually transmitted diseases. 

Muturi’s areas of expertise have led to several visiting scholar invitations. In 2023, she traveled to Daystar University in Kenya under a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship. A few years earlier, she traveled to China as a visiting scholar at the School of International Diplomacy, Jilin University, China. Prior to those experiences, Muturi accepted two other visiting scholar positions, both at institutions in Kenya. She is also on the roster for the Fulbright Senior Specialist Program.

In all, Nancy Muturi’s career was significant at the global level, influenced by the social challenges she experienced first-hand, and formalized by her master’s and doctoral studies at Iowa.

References

Muturi, N., & Issaka, B. (2023). Media use and the motivational factors for preventing communicable diseases among African immigrants in the United States. Howard Journal of Communications, 1-23.

Kusuma, M. T. P. L., Al-bashabsheh, Z., Al-bashabsheh, N. T., Parker, M., & Muturi, N. (2023). Examining Weight Stigmatization toward Obese Individuals among Nutrition and Dietetic Students using the Attribution Theory. Indian Journal of Public Health, 67(3), 415-421.

Cozma, R., & Muturi, N. (2021). It’s not all doom and gloom: Protection Motivation Theory factors that reverse the negative impact of social media use on compliance and protective health behaviors. Southwestern Mass Communication Journal, 37(1).

Muturi, N. (2020). Perceived risk of the harmful use of alcohol among young adults in the context of HIV&AIDS in Kenya. Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 13(2), 119–128.