Issue date: 6/24/09 Section: News

Charles Conrad, Texas A&M professor of communication, conducted research in Canada about the differences between Canadian and U.S. health care systems. [Click to enlarge]

Since becoming one of the University's first communication professors, author Charles R. Conrad has been published many times, but just recently his research has gone north.

On family vacations in the western part of Canada, Conrad rode ferries from one island to another talking to locals about their culture and comparing it to life in the U.S., and many times the conversation would turn to health care. Conrad said he was fascinated by the pride Canadians had for their national health care system.

"They would ask me 'how can you live with a system where half of the people in your country file bankruptcy because of lack of health insurance?'" Conrad said.

As a communication researcher, Conrad wanted to know more, and turned this interest into the subject of his research and latest book, "In the Long Run We're All Dead: Organizations, Rhetoric and Health Policymaking."

He carried a book about the Canadian health care system with him on the ferry as a reference when talking with locals. He said he sought answers beyond the obvious differences between the two health care systems.

"Why is it Americans believe we have the best health care when we are No. 1 in cost and 29th in infant mortality, below Guatemala? How did this happen and why does it stay that way?" Conrad said.

Observation incited this particular research, and observation continues to be a skill that inspires many of Conrad's research efforts, he said.

"I am curious and I have come to realize that there are lots of questions that weren't figured out," Conrad said. "I would have to answer them myself."

The focus of Conrad's research is organizational rhetoric and communication, analyzing and observing the communication within an organization to find whether it has a positive or negative effect on the organization.

Conrad has also offered great insight into how communication that reinforces organizational power and arrogance can contribute to huge mistakes, said Communication department head Richard Street For example, he identified the Challenger space shuttle disaster as potentially preventable had miscommunications between the NASA organization decision-makers and scientists been eliminated.

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