By Jordan Castelloe, ARTT Community Coordinator
This entire week, Mark Coatney, ARTT’s business product lead, and I are in Detroit, talking trust in online communications with more than 2,000 public health professionals, including communicators, researchers, and policymakers. We’re all attending NACCHO360 (pronounced nay-cho, not nacho, like the chips), an annual week-long conference that is the largest convening of local health department leaders and public health professionals in the United States.
Our mission? Mark and I are eager to unveil and show off a pre-launch version of the ARTT Guide – planned for launch by the end of 2024 – that’s intended to help public health communicators answer the daily question of “what do I say and how do I say it?”
The 2,000-plus #NACCHO360 attendees are just the people we want to show it off to.
One of the ARTT Guide’s key target user groups is made up of the very same people attending NACCHO360: public health communicators.
Developed with input from experts in the field, the ARTT Guide is a Web-based software assistant that offers practical tips and resources to navigate the complexities of public health messaging. During the conference, we showcased the Guide's capabilities through live demonstrations and discussions with attendees.
If you’re curious about what the ARTT Guide can do, watch a video demo here (note: there’s no sound).
During our week in Detroit, Mark and I also had the opportunity to connect with dedicated public health communicators from all over the U.S., who generously shared their professional experiences and perspectives with us.
These conversations provided us with invaluable insights into the current challenges facing public health communicators that we can pass on to the other members of the ARTT team.
Speaking with NACCHO360 attendees, here’s what we learned:
We heard again and again at NACCHO360 that health departments are under-resourced to tackle communications challenges – many departments don’t have a designated communications person or anyone with formal comms training.
At the same time, we heard the critical role communication plays in public health initiatives – from dispatching urgent health information to preemptive storytelling and education about public health’s role in keeping our communities safe.
Speaking at NACCHO360, Mandy K. Cohen, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, emphasized the need to employ storytelling and clear communication to build trust with the public while describing all of the work public health organizations are doing behind the scenes to keep our communities safe.
During a NACCHO360 plenary session, Heard It Through the Grapevine: Public Health Partnerships, Collaboration, and Innovation, (the theme of this year’s conference) we also heard first-hand about the collaborative efforts between public health agencies, healthcare providers, community organizations, government agencies, academia, and the private sector who all work to enable a more holistic approach to addressing public health challenges.
Finally, on an individual level, sitting at our booth, Mark and I heard from several public health professionals who don’t yet always feel comfortable communicating with the public online.
This reaffirmed our commitment to ensure the ARTT Guide, once released, will offer practical tools that support public communicators.
While we know the ARTT Guide is only one piece of the puzzle, our conversations at NACCHO360 reaffirmed to me that our web-based software assistant can provide much-needed help and support for public health communicators. Among all the other competing priorities public health workers have to juggle on a daily basis, communicating with the public – which can feel daunting – often falls by the wayside.
Stay tuned as we finalize plans to release the first version of the ARTT Guide later this year. I’m excited the ARTT project may provide some much-needed support to public health communicators, such as the people we spent time with this week at NACCHO360.
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