Jenny Crowley, PhD, Associate Professor in the School for Communication Studies, will provide a lecture on the role of interpersonal communication and the necessary support of relationships when combating the systemic issues surrounding opioid abuse. Her lecture seeks to provide participants with a care-based perspective on the impact of substance abuse disorder in East Tennessee to pair succinctly with public health measures and increased perception of drug-brain interactions as delivered by Brain Awareness Week.

Dr. Crowley earned her PhD from the University of Iowa. Her primary area of specialization is interpersonal communication with specific research interests in stigma and supportive communication. In particular, her research is focused on understanding how features of communication contribute to perceptions of stigma as well as how supportive communication facilitates coping with stigma. She has complementary research interests in information management and alternative relationships. Currently, she is investigating how romantic couples communicatively cope and manage their personal and relational identities when struggling with opioid use disorder. She also recently received a grant from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to bring together community partners to combat the opioid crisis in rural eastern Tennessee. Her work has been published in Communication Research, Communication Theory, and the Journal of Family Communication.

Brain Awareness Week is an annual event held during the second week of March and organized by the Dana Foundation to recognize innovations and exciting topics in neuroscience. Each year, organizations across the world center their own Brain Awareness Week around various themes. Thus, the Advancement of Neuroscience at UTK has decided to develop programming around the neurological basis of addiction and its greater implications in the greater Knoxville community, providing a series of workshops, guest lectures, and social events to bring light to this issue.