Author: Jim

I work in public health which, as you’ve heard me complain, can be a bit dry.

We talk about very complicated subjects and the people who do most of our talking have numerous advanced degrees and understand those subjects at a very high level. The problem with this is that the people that need the information generally don’t have the background or education to follow along with those conversations. So we have communicators to “bring down the reading level.” We are translators. We transform “public healthy language” into “plain language.” (This is one of my favorite things to do at my job. I make knowledge available to the masses. I educate, I inform, I empower.)

Traditionally this wasn’t much of a priority. An older gentleman in a white coat says something and the public had been trained to believe that information. In a world where information was scarce, it was easy to take information presented in some sort of official format and accept it as right, as gospel.

We don’t live in that world anymore though. Information is anything but scarce. We are buffeted by information from all sides of every discussion. Every arguer on every side has piles of supporting information, some well written, some poorly written, some debunked, some unproven, and only some correct. For folks who have trouble deciphering information, imagine trying to wade through mountains of arguments, all of it contradicting other arguments.

I see an opportunity. We can be that translator. We can reestablish ourselves as the place to turn when people need real unbiased information. I’m not the only one that thinks there’s a role for someone to take charge:

Even some of the most forward-thinking media folks are saying the same thing:

The journalist has not been replaced but displaced, moved higher up the editorial chain from the production of initial observations to a role that emphasizes verification and interpretation.

Working between the crowd and the algorithm in the information ecosystem is where a journalist is able to have most effect, by serving as an investigator, a translator, a storyteller.

There are a number of things that need to happen for us to embrace this role, first of which is to accept the gospel of plain language. But we can do more. In this age of social media, it’s not enough to reactively talk like a normal person. This brings me to the money link: Sense About Science. SAS is a new tool intended to decipher, translate, demystify scientific information. But more than just scientific information, but also the scientific process that got us that information. What does peer review mean? Is a particular study valid? What does that mean for me?

Because really, isn’t that why we do what we do? Science for science’s sake is good, but science for the good of the public–the good of the person–is divine.

Recently, I had the great pleasure of attending a social media and crisis communication two-day workshop sponsored by our local Task Force, provided by the wonderful folks at the Media Survival Group. (Full disclosure: I love every single session of theirs that I attend; and I’m not even getting paid to say that!) Kerry and Karen were, as usual, terrific, but listening to Kelly Huston’s (Assistant Secretary at CalEMA for Crisis Communications and Media Relations and owner of the very useful ProCommunicator website) advice got me thinking about crisis communication consultants. His presentation (piped in live via Skype) gave tons of advice in easy-to-remember bites. There were the five P’s of why you should use social media, and then the ABC method of first steps in crisis communication response.

And even today, I remember both of those things. What a clever way to teach an idea that I’ve never used. And I think, damn Kelly, you’re good. It’s just as good as these other little jingles and mnemonics I’ve heard about crisis communications. Red, yellow and green; nobody cares what you know until they know you care; the list goes on.

And that got me thinking. Why does this industry have so many cute little ditties? I haven’t heard anything similar in public health, nor emergency management . Not accounting (other than PEMDAS) or police work or nursing. What’s so special about crisis communications? And then it hit me. People who do those other jobs do them every day. There is muscle memory built. No need for tricks, just do it like you did it yesterday. We don’t do that for crisis communications. We do our every day work, something explodes, and only then do we pull out all of the cute little jingles and mnemonics. But this is problematic, because if you break down what most crisis communicators teach, you can actually divide it into two very distinct areas of instruction. The first is the actual crisis communication advice. All of those neat little tricks. And empathy.

The second part, though, is one that we all seem to forget. It’s the one where they say that crisis communication cannot be a one-off thing. It cannot be something that we only do when the thing explodes and we pull the plan off the shelf and remember the mnemonics and express empathy and when it’s over we go back to our day-to-day jobs. It’s the one where they say that the things we do today will come back in spades in an emergency, so start today. Start messaging, start building dark sites, build your presence, teach your front-line staff, exercise them, exercise yourself, write templated messages, review your operations for pinch-points where crises are likely to happen, hold after-action meetings following others’ crises. Literally, make crisis communication part of your everyday job.

But we’re not so good at that. So we have mnemonics. We have tips and tricks and five steps to success! We have everything we need to make us feel comfortable forgetting about doing crisis communication until after the thing explodes. So I wonder, whose fault is that? Why can we not internalize the whole of what crisis communicators espouse? Is it because we’ve got these handy-dandy helpers, so we can “set it and forget it,” or did our consultants come up with these because they realized that nobody was really listening to them and they needed to deliver something of value.

I love working in public health. I honestly believe that there are few fields where the vast majority of the people not only enjoy the work, but are truly called by it. They enjoy helping people at the micro and macro level. They are the ones who give folks the ability to be healthy. By and large, they do this by depending on cutting edge research to inform what they do and what effects those interventions have on people. Truthfully, the amount of money going into public health research is money well-spent (and, some would argue, not enough). There now exists very good information on actions that people can take to live a healthier life. (And for my emergency friends, swap out healthier for better prepared and the rest of this post works just as well for you.)

So why don’t people take those actions we’ve been telling them to do over and over and over? Because I think there is a fundamental break in the process. We have excellent information locked away inside our brains–the very best, I’d say. But it’s not making it to the people who can implement it. Because as much as they come to our seminars and take our handouts and see the effects of their unhealthy behaviors and the effects of disasters the world over, they’re still not integrating what we’ve learned.

Just so you know, I had to rewrite the last part of that previous sentence. The original version said, “they’re still not listening.” Like it’s their fault.

We have the information, we provide it. Dust off hands, move to the next problem. One would think that after thirty or forty years of being almost completely ignored, we’d understand that maybe that process isn’t working so well. That maybe it’s not their fault for not listening to us. Maybe it’s our fault.

That’s kind of the message in this New York Times Well blog post from late last year:

Maybe, some researchers say, the problem is the message. It obviously has not had much of an effect.

The recommendation in the very next sentence, though, doesn’t really get at that:

The idea now is to make use of tools that psychologists have developed to assess people’s moods during exercise, asking how good or bad it feels as the intensity varies.

More research, yet still not on message delivery. The goal, if you read the article, is to inform the exercisers that maybe they’re doing it wrong, and if they just try to do it another way, maybe then they’ll be successful.

Dust off hands, move to the next problem.

But don’t worry, we’ll have this conversation again next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.