The Gillings School and ASPPH have collaborated to create a resource guide that can support dialogue between public health professionals and policymakers.
Though it should go without saying that public health is important, the reality is that it must be said — persistently and plainly — to help others grasp the complicated public health challenges facing our society, as well as the potential solutions that can improve health outcomes.
Understanding the importance of engaging with policymakers and the public about these important issues, the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) formed a communications and marketing section, which is led by Matthew Chamberlin, associate dean for communications and marketing at the Gillings School. This group recently released a comprehensive resource guide to help public health schools and professionals raise their voices and promote greater public awareness of their work.
It all started with one email.
In the fall of 2021, as new guidelines were continually issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, tensions were at a fever pitch. Masking policies, school attendance protocols, travel rules were debated in full force, and information — and misinformation — was in no short supply.
“We were just trying to figure out a way to keep public health issues in front of policymakers.”
“I’ve never really felt motivated to do anything like this before,” Chamberlin said, “but I came into work that day and looked up my peers at 24 schools of public health, and I just sent them all a cold email. It basically said, ‘You don’t know me. I don’t know you. But we all have the same job, and we’re all going through the same stuff. It just seems to me that all of us together — with all of our deans, our alumni, our researchers, our students and our boards — we could do so much more together.’”
Out of the 24 people he emailed, 22 responded.
From there, this informal group of public health communicators met monthly over Zoom, with ASPPH representatives also in attendance. At first, the monthly meet-up was primarily a forum to share concerns and frustrations about what was happening in the world, but soon it became a vehicle for more. The health communicators began exchanging information and advice based on their own experiences and discussing larger issues that affected them all.
“It ended up being a really powerful network that lets us all do our jobs better,” Chamberlin said.
Over time, the group became an official section of ASPPH, with governance and subcommittees — and a rise in popularity. The section meets quarterly and now has about 100 members, representing almost every school or program of public health in the country.
One of those larger issues that kept coming up in group discussions was how to prioritize public health for legislators and policymakers. The new ASPPH section decided to create a subcommittee to develop tools that public health programs and professionals could use to increase policymakers’ and the public’s understanding of — and ultimately, support for — public health.
The ASPPH resource guide is the result of that subcommittee’s work. It contains key messaging that public health programs can use when talking about the need for ongoing investments in public health. It also includes issue briefs for policy staff, social media tags and suggested content, videos and scripts, email and newsletter copy, and other content.
The attention paid to public health can be inconsistent, partly from cyclical budget pressures and availability of funds, and partly from officeholders changing with potentially every election. The resource guide takes this variability into account.
“We made this guide so that you can take these messages and tailor them to work well for you in your community and your state,” Chamberlin said. “We were just trying to figure out a way to keep public health issues in front of policymakers.”
Interest and reception to the guide has been positive, particularly during a session at the 2023 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, when Chamberlin presented the guide to a standing-room only audience.
Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota recently signed a law legalizing adult-use cannabis in the state. During the 2023 legislative session (Jan-May 2023), Sarah Bjorkman, the then-communications director at the University of Minnesota’s (UMN) School of Public Health, referenced the ASPPH’s guide when developing an advocacy campaign for annual appropriation from cannabis sales tax to establish a new Center for Cannabis Research at UMN.
“We were successful in this campaign and were designated with an annual $2.5M appropriation for the center,” Bjorkman said. “As defined within the bill, the specific charge of the center is to ‘investigate the effects of cannabis use on health and research other topics related to cannabis, including but not limited to prevention and treatment of substance use disorders, equity issues, education and decriminalization.’”
The group has just started talking about what this year’s big project should be and will meet for a section retreat this summer in Boston to finalize those plans. The communicators also continue to look for ways to keep raising the visibility of the important work that is public health.
“Post-COVID, I think there was a little bit more awareness in the mind of the public as to what public health really means, but where do we go from here to continue to make people really understand that public health is not just vaccines or pandemics?” Chamberlin said. “You have to remain optimistic and know that the work that we do, and that all the schools do, is moving the needle.”
