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8 Communications and Media
Pages 73-84

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From page 73...
... This section will focus primarily on the opportunities and challenges associated with communicating during the vaccination campaigns and not the earlier efforts focused on minimizing transmission. Communication Challenges During the 2009 H1N1 Vaccination Campaign Communication during the 2009 H1N1 vaccination campaign was extremely challenging.
From page 74...
... These mechanisms included regular conference calls with officials from the CDC, ASTHO, NACCHO, and the National Public Health Information Coalition. These efforts were intended to disseminate information from the federal level and to share practices at each level, to gather feedback regarding what was happening in the field, and to learn about different
From page 75...
... As a result, although the CDC encouraged vaccination among the priority groups as soon as vaccine became available, it delayed promoting vaccination more aggressively through traditional media campaign strategies until December, when supply was more plentiful. However, some workshop participants said that advanced information about the design and contents of the federal vaccination communications campaign would have allowed states to align their own campaigns and improve message consistency.
From page 76...
... Delaware reported that most Health Alert Notices did not reach most physicians and that blast faxes were sometimes thrown away by staff before they reached physicians. Zach Moore from the North Carolina Division of Public Health noted, "We never got out of the single digits with the percentage of providers reached with any given message." North Carolina did not have the capability to directly e-mail healthcare providers in the state.
From page 77...
... Although many communications challenges arose during the 2009 H1N1 response, particularly relating to the vaccination campaign, many participants said the CDC's 2009 H1N1 communications campaign used good practices that should be continued for future emergency responses. The CDC focused its messages on articulating the CDC's goals and actions, acknowledging what was known and what was not, and setting the expectation that the information and advice would change as the situation evolved.
From page 78...
... . Although not a comprehensive review of state and local public health communications campaigns, this section discusses some of the mechanisms used by public health authorities to communicate with the public, particularly those mechanisms deemed by participants to have been successful.
From page 79...
... Greg Bogdan, research director and medical toxicology coordinator with the Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Center at Denver Health, which runs CoHELP, reported that CoHELP's biggest challenge was helping residents understand the situation and how it differed from national messages. Others reported that their biggest challenge in running hotlines was keeping everyone on the hotline updated with the most current, accurate information because it frequently changed.
From page 80...
... They noted that when done effectively, it involved public health officials being available and responsive to media members, helping reporters understand the science and the details of the vaccination campaign, and building relationships between public health and the media. Maggie Fox, health and science editor at Reuters, noted that one of the primary challenges for news organizations covering 2009 H1N1 was that it was not the flu they had prepared to cover.
From page 81...
... In areas such as Atlanta, with four large media outlets, partnerships created and maintained over the past decade paid off tremendously in spreading the news. Despite helpfulness in some circumstances, the media are not a venue to accomplish all the goals of a public health communications campaign.
From page 82...
... These included • Coordinate among stakeholders to ensure better alignment of messaging, particularly among federal, state, and local public health agencies. • The National Public Health Information Coalition should develop a mechanism to enable rapid sharing of focus group results and other communication materials so that public health departments can benefit from the information and avoid unnecessarily duplicating efforts.
From page 83...
... • Work with medical societies and associations to educate healthcare providers and communicate with them about logistics. Communicating with the Public There were many individual suggestions for enhancing communication with the public for consideration by public health authorities, health systems, and healthcare providers, among others.
From page 84...
... Media Relations There were several individual suggestions for enhancing communication with the media for consideration by public health authorities. These included • Proactively engage media (e.g., by inviting them to observe decision-making meetings or vaccine clinics)


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