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Since graduating with my Master of Public Health in 2021, I have worked two jobs in Communications. What is a woman with a degree in public health, doing in Communications? I feel a necessity and a passion to be a communicator in a field that affects our daily lives.
Public health exists all around us—in the education of health practices, in health policy, in the prevention of disease, and the caring for ourselves and our communities.
As the sole Health Communications Specialist for a large health department in Michigan, the reason why I needed to be an effective communicator was urgent and straightforward—we communicated with the public at large to promote positive health outcomes and prevent disease during the COVID-19 pandemic. When I was there in 2021, this meant partnering with schools to hold vaccination events or sharing the latest mandates around social distancing. Communications included press releases, flyers, and social media regarding topics such as potential meningococcal exposures at the local university or opportunities for mothers to utilize the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program.
As the Communications Associate for The Center for Community Solutions, I serve as a liaison among the policy, data, and the people who are interested in learning more about both. I design data fact sheets for health topics in Ohio, such as the health of women, the health of our counties, or on Medicaid enrollment and funding. I work with our research team to deliver our consulting clients purposefully designed reports full of data and analysis. I create weekly social media posts that highlight our work and the work of our community partners. I work internally to improve PowerPoints or create materials for events and webinars.
For an organization of only 20 full-time staff members, we put out a lot of stuff!
5 guiding questions that make data digestible
Since starting this role two years ago, I have created 2,839 posts across our social media platforms, designed nine fact sheet and data profile projects resulting in over 542 unique products, and worked alongside our Research team to design more than 16 external reports. With many projects and designs behind me, and many planned for the future, I feel like I’ve finally mastered the Community Solutions brand and steps to executing a project.
In 2024, we released fact sheets for the eleven Cuyahoga Council Districts. Fact sheets start with an identified need from either leadership, colleagues, or the community and come to fruition through an extreme process of collaboration. Our research team will hand over an Excel document, in this case, 177 columns of indicators that we are going to fit on a two-sided document. While some people enjoy looking at the raw data, we know that counts and percentages are not always digestible, especially when looking at a spreadsheet of 2,314 data points.
How does an Excel document of data turn into a tangible fact sheet? There are 5 guiding questions that can help.
1. What is the branding?
Logos. Fonts. Colors. Icons. Images. Whether creating factsheets for an internal project or consulting project, identifying how it is going to look before starting is important. For Community Solutions, our products consist of our blue, red, and gray, League Spartan and Bison. But when we were consulted to make fact sheets for the Girl Scout councils of Ohio alongside The University of Cincinnati Evaluation Services Center, we had access to the Girl Scout green, and Girl Scout and Trefoil fonts.
While our Community Solutions’ branding may be direct and simple, the Girl Scout brand is colorful and emotive. Every data product is a direct representation of the organization and executing the brand is a key component.
2. Who is the audience?
Policymakers? Community members? Advocates? I always think about who will be looking at this product and how it will be used. In 2024, when we produced the fact sheets for the Cuyahoga Council Districts, we created both fact sheets and data profiles. Data profiles are a few pages longer and consist of tables with comprehensive data. Fact sheets include visual aspects to represent the data, such as charts, icons, infographics, or call-out text boxes and we try to keep them to only a few pages. From our website, “The fact sheets summarize, and the data profiles provide extensive information about each district on employment and income, poverty, education, housing, and health.”
Data profiles are more of an appendix, and users might be more comfortable interpreting dense data; fact sheets are intended to be more engaging, highlighting key data with visualization.
3. What is the story we are telling?
Are we highlighting a need? Demonstrating change over time? By allowing the data to tell the story, it ensures that our final product is both informative and helpful. In the Medicaid fact sheets, the goal was to clarify who was being served in Ohio and how Medicaid impacts those who live in Ohio and the economy in Ohio.
By allowing the data to tell the story, it ensures that our final product is both informative and helpful.
When we choose to look at information by demographics, health, economic stability, community support, and access to various resources, we can understand the factors that may support or hurt a community. Without a story, a fact sheet is just a page of numbers. With a story, it becomes an advocacy tool.
4. What should be a table versus a visual aspect?
Apologies to our Research team (Emily, Alex, Suzanna, Tamikka, & Andy!) but for a lot of us, data alone is not enough to understand the story or pattern. Utilizing charts and icons helps to make the information accessible and understand patterns among indicators. For example, in our Medicaid fact sheets, we transformed enrollment numbers into simplified visuals to highlight age group distribution. We utilized the gray, blue, and red colors to represent age groups across the two indicators.
This allows readers to see that while individuals under 18 are not the largest age group in Ohio, children under 18 are the largest population to receive Medicaid. Similarly, from our Council District fact sheets, dense housing data was converted to data visualization.
Dense data can be reworked into infographics, turning statistics into visual ratios that readers can absorb quickly.
5. How should our products be distributed?
At Community Solutions, we utilize the C.O.P.E. strategy – Create Once, Promote Everywhere. Without a story, a fact sheet is just a page of numbers. With a story, it becomes an advocacy tool. I create 1-2 social media graphics for every single piece of content that we produce, which is then cross posted on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn (follow us!). Our Communications team sends out press releases. Our policy team will directly send fact sheets to legislators for their districts. We encourage our staff to share products with their networks. We work extremely hard to deliver information when it is timely and when there is an informational gap that needs to be addressed. Creating the product itself is not the success, but rather it is getting it into the hands of those who advocate or make decisions on the health of Ohioans.
The C.O.P.E. strategy: Create Once, Promote Everywhere.
'Public health saves lives' has been my LinkedIn bio for the last 5 years
Through my public health education and career, my goal has remained the same: increase people’s awareness, knowledge, and attitudes around the health factors that impact both the individual and the community. Every day, I work alongside my colleagues to make complex public health concepts and policies feel tangible to people who are invested in the outcomes.
People deserve to understand the information, data, and policy regarding their health, and it needs to be clear and timely; all public health work is preventive.
The thread running through the public health jobs I’ve held is this: people deserve to understand the information, data, and policy regarding their health, and it needs to be clear and timely. Communicating public health can empower communities, build trust, and disrupt the perpetuation of health disparities. My work in communicating public health has shown me that all public health work is preventive. Data, analysis, and policy advocacy are just as essential to health outcomes as vaccines and disease prevention. As I continue my work in the public health field, I will always strive to make public health feel personal, actionable, and equitable for everyone.
