Naessiamba Eab-Aggrey

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Global Health Communication, Health Behavior, Pharmaceutical Communication, Digital Health, AI and eHealth Literacy

Naessiamba Eab-Aggrey is a Ph.D. student specializing in Health Communication. She practiced as a pharmacist in Ghana for half a decade before moving into health communication research, an experience that continues to shape her scholarship today. Her research interests lie at the intersection of digital health, pharmaceutical communication, artificial intelligence, and eHealth literacy, examining how healthcare professionals and their clients engage with emerging health innovations, AI-enabled health tools, and online health platforms to improve communication, understanding, and decision-making across communicable and non-communicable disease contexts.

Grounded in a patient-centered perspective, her research explores strategies that strengthen provider-patient communication and support patient education, medication comprehension, adherence, safety, and evidence-based use, with particular attention to populations facing compounded barriers of literacy, access, and trust. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Pharmacy from the University of Ghana, a Master's degree in Communication from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and a Global Health Certificate from McGill University, Canada.

Naessiamba brings a multidisciplinary, practice-informed perspective to her scholarship, grounded in over five years of professional experience in Ghana's pharmaceutical sector, including managerial roles and service as a superintendent pharmacist in retail and wholesale settings.

At George Mason University, she serves as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, teaching Foundations of Health Communication and Fundamentals of Communication, and previously served as Director of Communications for the Graduate and Professional Students Association (GAPSA). Her overarching goal is to leverage communication as a strategic bridge between clinical evidence, medical affairs practice, and patient understanding to reduce health disparities and improve outcomes.

Selected Publications

Harrell-Webber, A., Chang, W. L., Eab-Aggrey, N., Taylor, B. G., Lamuda, P. A., Pollack, H. A., ... & Zhao, X. (2026). Opioid Message Fatigue in the United States: Prevalence and Associations with Stigma and Policy Support. Substance Use & Misuse, 1-13.

Khan S, & Eab-Aggrey, N. (2025). A double-edged sword?: Digitalization, health disparities, and the paradoxical case of e-pharmacy in Ghana. Digital Health. 2025;11. doi:10.1177/20552076251326224

Eab-Aggrey, N., & Khan, S. (2024). Prospects and challenges of online pharmacy in post-Covid world: a qualitative study of pharmacists' experiences in Ghana. Exploratory Research in Clinical and Social Pharmacy, 13, 100395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcsop.2023.100395

Courses Taught

COMM 304-DL1 Foundations of Health Communication

COMM 101-Fundamentals of communication, 2023/2024- 2024/2025

COM 3083: Language and Communication Theory

Education

George Mason University, Ph.D. Health Communication, in progress

University of Texas at San Antonio, Master's in Communication, 2020-2022