Communication Department Faculty
Ashley Duggan
Professor of Health Communication
Ashley Duggan
Ph.D.
Contact
St. Mary's Hall S451
Telephone: 617-552-4988
Email: ashley.duggan@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0003-0263-9505
Education
- Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara
Courses
Relationships in Health and Illness
Nonverbal Communication
Social Scientific Research Methods
Interpersonal Communication
Research Interests
Relationship science, human communication research, interpersonal communication, health communication, primary healthcare
Expertise
- Communication
Department
Profile
Ashley Duggan, PhD, is Professor of Health Communication at Boston College and co-director of the BRANCH initiative - Building Research for Advanced Networks in Communication & Health). She holds a professional appointment in Family Medicine research at Tufts University School of Medicine and Fulbright Professor with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) University of Medicine and Health Sciences. She earned her PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2003. She brings two decades of experience in research, teaching, and mentorship. Her research bridges theory, research methods, and capacity-building for relationship science and human communication in healthcare and medicine/medical education including completing the Building Research Capacity fellowship with the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) and the Association for Departments of Family Medicine (ADFM).
Duggan brings interdisciplinary leadership including multiple roles with the International Association for Relationship Research (IARR), the National Communication Association (NCA), and the International Communication Association (ICA). Duggan was recently awarded the Berscheid-Hatfield Award for Distinguished Mid-Career Achievement from the International Association for Relationship Research and the Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Book Award for a monograph, awarded 2022 by the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association. As a Fulbright scholar with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) University of Medicine and Health Sciences, she worked with the Centre for Positive Health Sciences to connect relationship science and human communication research with positive health sciences.
Duggan was the local host of IARR international conference in 2024. Her interdisciplinary leadership includes multiple roles with the International Association for Relationship Research (IARR), the National Communication Association (NCA), and the International Communication Association (ICA).
Publications
Books
- Duggan, A. (March 2019). Health and Illness in Close Relationships. Book published in Advances in Personal Relationships series. Cambridge University Press.
- Review of book: Keeley, M.P. (2019). A critical book review of Health and Illness in Close Relationships. Health Communication.
- Book Award: Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Book Award for a monograph, awarded by the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association.
Articles and Book Chapters
- Shaughnessy, A.F., Vicini, A., SJ, Zgurzynski, M., O’Reilly-Jacob, M., & Duggan, A. (Under Submission). “Don’t worry, you can trust me!” Indicators of the dimensions of trust (and mistrust) in residents’ reflective writing.
- Vicini, SJ, A., Duggan, A., & Shaughnessy, A. (In Press). Theory Building as Integrated Reflection: Understanding Physician Reflection Through Human Communication Research, Medical Education, and Ethics. In Press in Journal of Health Ethics.
- Erlich, D., Lee, A., Walek, K., & Duggan, A. (In Press). Preparing for Conversations about End of Life: Medical Students Completing Their Own Advance Directives Described Increased Empathy for Patients. In Press in Family Medicine.
- Duggan, A.P., & Shaughnessy, A.F. (In Press). Communication Skills in Graduate Medical Education. In Press in International Encyclopedia of Health Communication.
- O’Reilly-Jacob, M., Vicini, SJ, A., & Duggan, A. (2022) “Ethical Considerations of Telehealth: Access, Inequity, Trust, and Overuse,” Journal of Health Ethics 18, no. 1. https://aquila.usm.edu/ojhe/vol18/iss1/3/ Published in Open Access Journal
- Burke, T., Young, V., & Duggan, A.P. (2022, In Press). Recognizing the Blurred Boundary between Health-Related Support and Control in Close Relationships. In Press in Personal Relationships.
- Duggan, A., & Glowacki, E. (2022). Health Communication, Relationships, and Medicine: Considerations for Considerations for Transformation and Shifts in Understanding from Covid-19. Published in J. Kuypers (Ed.) Personal and Administrative Perspectives from the Communication Discipline During the Covid-19 Pandemic. (pp. 77-99).
- Duggan, A., Glowacki, E., Molineux, B.L. (2022). The Reciprocal Influence of Substance Use Disorders and Family Members’ Communication. In A. Vangelisti, (Ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Family Communication. (pp. 436-448.) Routledge Duggan, A.P, Rosenbaum, M., Ho, M.Y., Matsaganis, M., van Weert, J.C.M., Pieterse,
- A.H., Bol, N., Rubinelli, S., Dean, M., & Bylund, C. (2021). Creating a Formal Partnership between EACH and the International Communication Association (ICA). Patient Education and Counseling, 104, 2846-2847
- .Shaughnessy, A., Slawson, D. & Duggan A. (2021). Alexa: “Can You Be My Family Medicine Doctor?” The Future of Family Medicine in the Coming Techno-World. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 34(2), 430-434.
- Shaughnessy, A., Allen, L., & Duggan, A.* (2017). Attention without Intention: Explicit Processing and Implicit Goal-Setting in Family Medicine in Residents’ Written Reflections. Education for Primary Care, 28(3), 150-156. *Last author designates senior author, as customary in medicine.
- Vicini, A., Shaughnessy, A., & Duggan, A. * (2017a). Cultivating the Inner Life of a Physician through Written Reflection. Annals of Family Medicine, 15(4), 379-381. *Last author designates senior author, as customary in medicine.
- Vicini, A., Shaughnessy, A., & Duggan, A. * (2017b). On the Inner Life of Physicians: Analysis of Family Medicine Residents’ Written Reflections. Journal of Religion and Health, 55(4), 1191-1200. *Last author designates senior author, as customary in medicine. DOI: 10.1007/s10943-017-0394-0
- Duggan, A.P., & Kilmartin, B. (2016). Parental and sibling behaviors that encourage daughters’ continued eating disorders: An Inconsistent Nurturing as Control perspective. In L. Olson & M. Fine (Eds.). The darker side of family communication: The harmful, the morally suspect, and the socially inappropriate (pp. 49-68.) Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
- Duggan, A.P. (2016). Doctor-Patient Communication. In Chuck Berger and Michael Roloff, General Editors, and John Caughlin, Jim Dillard, Denise Solomon and Steve Wilson, Associate Editors. International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication. (pp. 1-9). Wiley Blackwell and the International Communication Association.
- Duggan, A.P., Vicini, A., Allen, L., & Shaughnessy, A. (2015). Learning to See Beneath the Service: A Qualitative Analysis of Family Medicine Residents’ Reflections about Communication. Journal of Health Communication, 20, 1441-1448.
- Duggan, A.P. & Street, R.L., Jr. (2015). Interpersonal communication and health. In K. Glanz, B.K. Rimer, & K.V. Viswanath (Eds.). Health Behavior: Theory, Research and Practice. (pp. 243-268.) Jossey Bass.
- Harrington, N., & Duggan, A.P. (2015). Communication about mental health and illness. In N. Harrington (Ed.) Exploring Health Communication from Multiple Perspectives. (pp. 269-296). Routledge.
- Duggan, A.P. (2014). Patient and relationship-centered communication and medicine. In T. Thompson (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Health Communication. (Vol. 15, pp. 1029-1033). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Petronio, S., & Duggan, A.P. (2014). Patient privacy. In T. Thompson (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Health Communication. (Vol. 15, pp. 1040-1042). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Allen, L.F., & Duggan, A.P. (2014). Dependent variables derived from critical health outcomes. In T. Thompson (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Health Communication. (Vol. 4, pp. 305-306). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Allen, L.F., & Duggan, A.P. (2014). Pathways to health outcomes. In T. Thompson (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Health Communication. (Vol. 15, pp. 1026-1028). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Duggan, A.P., & Thompson, T.L. (2014). Social interaction processes in healthcare contexts. In C. Berger, (Ed.). Interpersonal Communication: Handbook of Communication Science. (pp. 493-516). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
- Shaughnessy, A., & Duggan, A.P. (2013). Family Medicine Residents' Reactions to Introducing a Reflective Exercise into Training. Education for Health, 26 (3), 141-147.
- Duggan, A.P., & Le Poire Molineux, B.A. (2013). The reciprocal influence of drugs and alcohol abuse on family members’ communication. In A. Vangelisti, (Ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Family Communication. (pp. 463-478). New York: Routledge.
- Duggan, A.P., & Bradshaw, Y.S. (2013). Shifting communication challenges to education and reflective practice: Communication to reduce disparities toward patients with disabilities. In Kreps, G. & Dutta, M. (Eds.), Reducing Health Disparities: Communication Intervention. (pp. 15-34). Boston: Peter Lang.
- Shepler, S., Duggan, A., Kosberg, R., Rosenthal, R., Willets, N., Mattina, A., Jefferson, B.,Weintraub, S., & Meadows, M. (2013). Friendships and Social Support in Coping with Illness Diagnosis: The Story of Sherry and the Martha’s Vineyard Communication Association. In S. Faulkner, (Ed.). Inside Relationships: A Creative Casebook in Relational Communication. (pp. 123-133). Left Coast Press.
- Petronio, S., Di Corcia, M., Duggan, A. (2012). Navigating ethics of physician-patient confidentiality: A Communication Privacy Management Analysis. The Permanente, 16 (4), 41-45.
- Duggan, A., Robinson, J., & Thompson, T.L. (2012). Understanding disability as an intergroup encounter. In H. Giles, (Ed.). The Handbook of Intergroup Communication. (pp. 250-263). New York: Routledge (Sponsored by the International Communication Association.)
- Duggan, A.P., Bradshaw, Y.S., Swergold, N., & Altman, W. (2011). When rapport-building extends beyond affiliation: Communication over-accommodation toward patients with disabilities. The Permanente, 15(2), 23-30. Also selected for CME credits.
- Duggan, A.P., & Thompson, T.L. (2011). Provider-patient communication and health outcomes. In T.L. Thompson, R.L. Parrott, R.L., & J. Nussbaum, (Eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Health Communication, Second Edition, (pp. 414-427) New York: Routledge.
- Duggan, A.P., Bradshaw, Y.S., & Altman, W. (2010). How do I ask about your disability? An Examination of Interpersonal Communication Processes between Medical Students and Patients with Disabilities. Journal of Health Communication,15 (3), 334-350.
- Duggan, A.P., & Bradshaw, Y.S., Carroll, S.E., Rattigan, S.H., Altman, W. (2009). What Can I Learn From This Interaction? A Qualitative Analysis of Medical Student Self Reflection and Learning in a Standardized Patient Exercise about Disability. Journal of Health Communication, 14 (8), 797-811.
- Duggan, A.P., Le Poire, B.A, Prescott, M., & Baham, C.S. (2009). Understanding the Helper: The Role of Codependency in Health Care and Health Care Outcomes. D.E. Brashers and D. Goldsmith (Eds.), Communicating to manage health and illness (pp. 271-300). New York: Routledge.
- Duggan, A.P., & Petronio, S. (2009). When your child is in crisis: Navigating medical needs with issues of privacy management. In T. Socha & G. Stamp (Eds.). Interfacing outside of home: Parents and children communicating with society (pp. 117-132). New York: Routledge.
- Duggan, A.P., Dailey, R., & Le Poire, B.A. (2008). Reinforcement and Punishment of Substance Abuse During Ongoing Interactions: A Conversational Test of Inconsistent Nurturing as Control Theory. Journal of Health Communication, 13 (5), 417-433.
- Duggan, A.P., & Bradshaw, Y.S. (2008). Mutual influence processes in physician-patient interaction: An interaction adaptation theory perspective. Communication Research Reports, 25 (3), 211-226.
- Duggan, A.P. (2007). Sex Differences in Communicative Attempts to Curtail Depression: An Inconsistent Nurturing as Control Perspective. Western Journal of Communication, 71 (2), 114-135
- Duggan, A.P. (2007). Review of Goldsmith, D.J. (2004). Communicating Social Support. In Journal of Family Communication, 7 (2), 143-146. Book Review.
- Duggan, A.P., & Le Poire, B.A. (2006). One down; two involved: An application and extension of Inconsistent Nurturing as Control theory to couples including one depressed individual. Communication Monographs, 73 (4), 379-405.
- Duggan, A.P. (2006). Review of D’Cruz, P. (2004). Family care in HIV/AIDS: Exploring lived experience. Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives,11, 709-712. Book Review.
- Duggan, A.P. (2006). Understanding interpersonal communication processes across health contexts: Advances in the last decade and challenges for the next decade. Journal of Health Communication, 11 (1), 93-108.
- Duggan, A.P., Le Poire, & Addis, K. (2006). A qualitative analysis of communicative strategies used by partners of substance abusers and depressed individuals during recovery: Implications for Inconsistent Nurturing as Control Theory. In R.M. Dailey, & B.A. Le Poire (Eds.) Applied interpersonal communication matters: Family, health, and community relations (pp. 150-174). New York: Peter Lang.
- Lammers, J., Barbour, J., & Duggan, A.P. (2003). Organizational forms for the provision of health care. In Thompson, T., Dorsey A.M., Miller, K. & Parrott, R. (Eds.). Handbook of health communication (pp. 319-346). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Lammers, J., & Duggan, A.P. (2002). Bringing the physician back In: Communication predictors of physicians’ satisfaction with managed care. Health Communication, 14, (493-514).
- Le Poire, B.A., Shepard, C., Duggan, A.P., & Burgoon, J.K. (2002). Relational messages associated with nonverbal involvement, pleasantness, and expressiveness in romantic couples. Communication Research Reports, 19, 195-206.
- Duggan, A.P., & Parrott, R. (2001). Physicians’ nonverbal rapport-building and patients’ talk about the subjective component of illness. Human Communication Research, 27, 299-311.
- Duggan, A.P., Hess, B., Morgan, D., Kim, S., & Wilson, K. (2001). Measuring students’ attitudes toward educational use of the Internet. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 25 (3), 267-281.
- Barker, V., Abrams, J.R., Tiyaamornwong,V., Siebold, D.R., Duggan, A.P., Park, H.S., & Sebastian, M. (2000). New contexts for relational communication in groups. Small Group Research, 31, 470-503.
- Parrott, R., Duncan, V., & Duggan, A.P. (2000). Promoting patients’ full and honest disclosure during conversations with health caregivers. In S. Petronio, S, (Ed.), Balancing the secrets of private disclosures (pp. 137-147). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Le Poire, B. A., Shepard, C., & Duggan, A.P. (1999). Nonverbal involvement, expressiveness, and pleasantness as predicted by parental and partner attachment style. Communication Monographs, 66, 293-311.
- Parrott, R., & Duggan, A.P. (1999). Influencing parents’ promotion of sun protection to youth: A behavior adaptation approach to role model behavior. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 27, 107-119.
- Parrott, R., Duggan, A.P., Cremo, J., Eckles, A., Jones, K., & Steiner, C. (1999). Communicating youth’s sun exposure risk to soccer coaches and parents: A pilot study in Georgia. Health Education and Behavior, 26, 385-395.
- Duggan, A.P. (1999). Georgia’s Got Youth Covered: Integrative Report of Four Year Study. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Atlanta, Georgia. Grant Summary.
- Duggan, A.P. (1997). Instructor’s Manual to accompany Leathers, D. Successful Nonverbal Communication, Third Edition.
Media Writing
- Duggan, A.P., Shaughnessy, A.F., Gordon, A., Altman, W., Shrout,R., & Glowacki, E. (2020). Relationships During COVID-19: Medical Student Considerations informed by Relationship Science. Video for Tufts University School of Medicine.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M74XzuyjDoE
- Duggan, A. (2020). Even when the pandemic passes, close relationships will be forever altered. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/interpersonal-and-family-relationships/202005/pandemic-and-between-season-relationships
- Duggan (2020). Wallet Hub. States with the best health infrastructure for coronavirus pandemic. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-best-health-infrastructure-for-coronavirus-pandemic/74483/#ashley-p-duggan
- Duggan (2018). Tips for first-time Boston marathon runners and economic impact of the marathon. Finance Express. http://myfinancexpress.blogspot.com/2018/04/2018-boston-marathon-facts-records.html
- Rafal, K., Shapira, A., & Duggan, A. (2017: Creators). Our Heart Speaks: Patient Stories from around the World. (2017-Present). Online platform for sharing stories of hope amidst newly diagnosed disabilities. http://ourheartspeaks.org/
Appointments, Awards, and Grants
Senior Fulbright Fellow in Medical Sciences / Medical Education (2023). Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) University of Medicine and Health Sciences. Centre for Positive Health Sciences.
Tufts University School of Medicine. Department of Family Medicine. Director of Research Partnerships. Research Faculty. Department of Family Medicine.
Co-Director, BRANCH Initiative --Building Relationship science for Advanced Networks in Communication & Health. Co-Director with Bernard Ewigman, MD.
Faculty Affiliate, Larry A. Green Center. Advancing Primary Health Care for the Public Good.
Berscheid-Hatfield Distinguished Mid-Career Award (2022). International Association for Relationship Research (IARR).
Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Book Award for a monograph--- For my Health and Illness in Close Relationships monograph, Published by Cambridge University Press (2019). The Miller book award is given by the Interpersonal Division of the National Communication Association.
Fellow (2021-2022), Building Research Capacity in Family Medicine with the North American Primary Care Research Group and the Association for Departments of Family Medicine.