As communications director at Big Cities Health Coalition, I managed our organization's first-ever messaging research project in 2023. Few Americans understand what public health does, which made the challenge of getting people to use masks and get vaccines even harder. Public health now has an image problem to solve, so we decided to tackle a small corner of that challenge.
We wanted to know: how could we more successfully talk about the value of public health with voters and policymakers who are neither wholehearted public health supporters (wearing masks everywhere, have all their shots) nor anti-vaxxers. How could we talk to the persuadable middle?
Our messaging research – conducted with Hart Research – turned up some useful findings that I crafted into a messaging guide and presented to several professional audiences. Below I describe some of the thought process that went into presenting the work on our website. As of February 2024, the messaging guide has been downloaded more than 1,100 times, making it by far the most downloaded resources on our site of all time.
As communications director at the Big Cities Health Coalition, I inherited a WordPress site that an outside developer had built using a block structure. Creating engaging web posts within the limits of the existing block system has been a challenge. But it is well worth the time to do so, as the website is one of the nonprofit's most important assets.
Much of the knowledge we share on the site is abstract and policy-oriented, which creates the additional challenge of making the posts visually interesting. I design graphics, charts, and visually engaging calls-to-action to break up walls of text.
