Dr. Jay Baglia is an Assistant Professor of Speech Communication with a focus on Health Communication. He has taught at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Southwestern University near Austin, TX, and San José State University in California. Immediately prior to joining Kutztown University, Dr. Baglia was a medical educator for Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) in Allentown. For LVHN, he developed curriculum and assessment tools for the Department of Family Medicine Residency Program, planned and facilitated workshops in the Teaching Leader Series, and served as study coordinator for the Cultural Awareness Implementation Team baseline assessment group.

Dr. Baglia teaches courses in Health Communication, Fundamentals of Speech, Introduction to Communication Theory & Research, and Interpretation of Literature. His research interests include illness narratives, popular media and health communication, gendered health and medicine, health disparities, and integrative medicine.

His academic preparation includes a B.A. in Communication from the University of South Florida. He earned an M. A. from USF in 1999, concentrating on gender communication in organizations. He also has two graduate certificates – one in Women’s Studies from USF and the other in Sexuality, Culture and Society from the University of Amsterdam. For his doctoral studies, Dr. Baglia focused on gender communication and health; he received his Ph.D. in 2003 (also from USF) under the tutelage of Dr. Elizabeth Bell.

Dr. Baglia has published a book – The Viagra Ad Venture: Masculinity, Media, & the Performance of Sexual Health (Peter Lang Publishing, 2005) – and book chapters, book reviews, and articles in journals such as Health Communication, Text & Performance Quarterly, Women & Language, and the Journal of Dramatic Theory & Criticism. He has made over three dozen presentations at academic conferences and regularly serves as respondent. He is a member in good standing of the National Communication Association (NCA), the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender (OSCLG), the Society for Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), and the Eastern States Communication Association (ECA). He is currently on the editorial board of Health Communication, Body & Society, Liminalities, and Kaleidoscope. He has also served in the capacity of ad hoc reviewer for national and regional journals and textbook publishers.

In his spare time, Dr. Baglia enjoys hiking, yoga, traveling, acting, reading short fiction, skiing, hockey, cooking, and attending rock concerts. He also roots for the New York Mets and the Tampa Bay Rays. He lives in Allentown with his partner, Elissa Foster.