Communications Breakdown: What Works (and Doesn't) in Health and Science Communication
Communications Breakdown is a new podcast that breaks down what works (and doesn't) in health and science communication. Hosted by Tracy Mehan and Katrina Boylan, this podcast brings you into their world of research translation, health promotion, public health communications strategy, website and social media management, graphic design, and much more.
Communications Breakdown: What Works (and Doesn't) in Health and Science Communication
When Public Health Meets the Instagram Era
Remember when social media was just typing out a quick message and hitting “post”? Those days are long gone, replaced by the constant pressure to create eye-catching visuals that also have impact. This isn't just about aesthetics—it's about whether important health messages are being seen at all in today's crowded digital landscape.
In this candid conversation, we pull back the curtain on a struggle facing countless health communicators: the growing demands of visual communication in a field where most practitioners received little to no visual design training. We explore the disconnect between what public health students learn in school versus what they need in practice, and whether the return on investment for visual-first platforms justifies the resources required. Beyond identifying problems, we discuss strategic approaches to platform selection, ways to develop visual communication skills, and how reframing challenges through positive motivation can transform outcomes.
Have you experienced similar challenges in your health communication work? We'd love to hear your thoughts and strategies! Talk to us on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and YouTube, or text using the link at the top of this box.
In the episode we refer to the PH Wins report (Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey). You can find that document at: https://debeaumont.org/phwins/2024-survey/
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This podcast is a project of the Center for Injury Research Translation and Communication (CIRTC). Connect with CIRTC: www.cirtc.org
Find CIRTC on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and YouTube.
Note: all thoughts and opinions shared in this podcast are personal and not representative of any organization.
Welcome to Communications Breakdown, where we break down what works and doesn't in health and science communication. I'm Katrina Boylan.
Tracy:And I'm Tracy Mehan. In this episode we're going to listen in on a conversation we recently had about something a lot of us in public health are thinking about, but not always talking about how hard it's gotten to keep up with the growing demands of visual communication. How hard it's gotten to keep up with the growing demands of visual communication. If you've ever taken one of our social media trainings, you've probably heard me describe social media as a teenage boy. It's always hungry.
Katrina:And speaking of being hungry, if you stay until the end, we have an extra treat just for our listeners.
Tracy:Definitely stay tuned. It's worth it. Seriously, though, social media has become much more visual than it used to be, and we used to be able to write a 240 character text post, put it up on twitter and we were done, but now you have to create a graphic, or even a video, to go with your post if you want anyone to see it. When you think about the fact that many of us weren't actually trained on how to create effective visuals, how much more time each post takes to create and then add. In the dwindling funding environment, which often means less staff time to create posts, it has become harder and harder to do this work.
Katrina:PHWIN survey, which is the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey from the DeBeaumont Foundation and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. It captures data on the demographics of the workforce and captures worker perspectives on key issues, and the 2024 survey that we discussed included nearly 57,000 state and local public health employees at all levels, not just younger employees, as I incorrectly indicated, and it's a really great snapshot of what's happening in the field, and there is a link to that survey in the show notes.
Tracy:All right, let's jump into our conversation, where we're talking about something that comes up all the time how hard it is for public health and those in academia to actually keep up with the ever-changing needs of social media, especially as it has moved to the more visual formats.
Katrina:One thing that, after having taken back over the management of the interns as much as I have, is it is reminding me of some of the skill gaps that I'm seeing between what we do out in our daily jobs and what I think a lot of people in public health, even in programs, are doing, and that is graphic design. You know, even if you're designing a flyer, you know, like a recruitment flyer Now, granted, if you're going through IRB or something, you might have specific requirements, but I'm thinking about materials that you're handing to patients or study participants, or recruitment materials of different types, social media posts. You know a lot of people are using social media for recruitment, and so that's all design. And so I think about the fact that one of the things that almost always students are coming in with is experience with Canva. You know we're seeing that now, but they haven't been taught the strategy behind what looks good and what doesn't, and so that's honestly a huge part of what we end up training on.
Katrina:And I'm just thinking about, you know, we only get a couple of interns a year, a handful of interns a year, and so how many students would benefit from something like that, something that you know? I don't know if you have to go to we've talked about this a different area of the school to get that kind of thing. You know, we've talked about creating our own curriculum on graphic design, but it is becoming really clear to me that that, to me, is one of the huge gaps between what I think today's public health practice really requires and what students are leaving school with.
Tracy:Yeah, I think it used to be. We were a very text-heavy based world, so if you learned how to write the messages, that was all you needed. But in today's world we're visual, and I am not seeing the students either, but also the people actually in practice. I am in meetings every day, all week long, with different people of different levels of experience, and right now they are all saying I wish I had more training in communications work and how to get messages out to people. And, like you said, right now a lot of that is visual.
Tracy:Said right now, a lot of that is visual, and it is hard, it is time consuming. If you don't have the background, it can be really difficult. You know, we're lucky because we're at an institution that does have a whole department with graphic design, but even then it's not easy to work with them because they have so much work. It can take two to three weeks to get work back from them. You can't. That's too slow in many cases. So I do think that this is an area that is putting us in a really interesting situation. I'm in a lot of spaces where people are saying we need to be on social media and I personally agree with that I think a lot of people are in the digital space, whether that's social media platforms or you know some other way that we're out there. That's how people are getting their news, their information, all of that kind of stuff. And if we are already talking in our public health speak and then we're putting out visuals that aren't good, people are going to dismiss us.
Katrina:Yeah, and you know what I think is really fascinating? Did you see the PH WINS survey? They put out some more visuals about that a couple of days ago or yesterday or just recently, and what I think is interesting is the visuals are actually pretty good, honestly, but what really, you know, when I'm looking at it right now and we're talking about what we see as the gap and what we're hearing in these spaces, yet what they found in the PH WINS survey is that they say the top three training needs among state and local government public health employees are budget and financial management, policy engagement and systemic and strategic thinking, or systems and strategic thinking, and, if I recall correctly I did look at the data on this a while ago and that I think people reported feeling fairly confident in their communication skills. And so I also wonder if this is a? There's this?
Katrina:I think this survey is really dedicated for younger people under, you know, under no, actually maybe it is for everybody, but you know we do tend to be in maybe some of the more established career professional spaces, and so they, as you said, you didn't get that in your education. We were all text based, because this stuff just didn't exist, so I just I do also wonder if there's a gap between what you know the younger generation thinks maybe they need and what they actually need. One thing we have heard from the students is that you know they think they know Canva or what they're using, or you know visual design, and then they come and work with us and they realize there's a lot they don't know, and so I just think it's interesting that you know the survey is identifying other things as stated priorities of this cohort. Yeah, we're hearing something different and seeing something different in the students that come through.
Tracy:Yeah, I did see that report and I agree that those top three areas are really important and I know that our view is skewed a little bit because we do focus on the communications angle of things. You know, I have a firm, passionate belief that a lot of why people don't understand public health and injury prevention is because we think we're communicating well to them but we actually aren't. It doesn't matter how great our reports are or what the data says, if people aren't listening to us, believing us, hearing us, seeing us, it doesn't matter. We're talking into the void. Seeing us, it doesn't matter. We're talking into the void. Yeah, so I think you know, I don't know. I think this will be something interesting for us to explore.
Tracy:I've been out of classes for a while, so you know we have to take that for what it is. But what I saw and still see sometimes with the people that I interact with that lead the classes is we're having them do an assignment to create a video, we're having them create a flyer, we're having them do social media posts, but none of the professors are actually doing that in their daily work, so they don't know how to give them good feedback and that's why I think we're getting. We hear from the interns, like you said, oh, oh, we're being taught that we're doing the exercises like that, but when they actually do the work with us, then, yeah, they're like oh, wow, I never got any of this feedback. I didn't think about those things, and it's different when you're creating something for a class, that you're creating in a void, versus when I ask them to say OK, let's look at your design. Would you stop in your Instagram feed to open that and look at it and engage with it?
Katrina:Almost every time, I watch their face and they're like oh, hasn't even occurred to them, yep, and they're like, oh, hasn't even occurred to them, yep, but you know. I think the other thing is that you know you talk about the professors, but the fact that I don't know that the professors also know that the kind of mid-career or more established career professionals are saying the things we're hearing Now. Again, we are perhaps a little biased, but it is something we do hear a lot and it's something you get asked about all the time. You know, how did you design those great slides? That was the best, you know best presentation I've ever seen. You know you get asked about this. So I just, again, I think that there's another space where we as a field can maybe explore ways to, you know, broaden maybe that concept of what is good communication and start really focusing on the visual aspect of it, because that is honestly a huge.
Katrina:You know, the reason this has really come up is that you know we, like most people, are on social media and most social media now is so visual forward that it takes a lot of time and content and strategy and planning and research to create a single visual, and so when it used to be all text-based, you know we could write off something, pop in a link, and we were good and we didn't really have to go through so many layers of planning and thought with things, because it just, you know, the things that are communicated visually are so different than the things that are. You know, we read, and so who are we signaling with this visual that this is for them? You know, how do we signal that this is for them? How do we signal credibility, finding imagery that backs up our messaging? What is the messaging for the graphic? All of those things? You know, it used to just be the text and a link and we were good. So the process is just expanded so kind of exponentially, at the point that feeding the social media beast, as we often call it, has become really challenging, and so we've often used our student work to help generate that content.
Katrina:When it was text-based, I will be honest, it was a lot easier. So the fact that we're seeing this gap in the graphic design skills, yet what we need is so much more visual, because of the social media, because of the way that we're communicating now, because of the way that we're communicating now, you know, it's just been. You know, to me it's just a more glaring problem. You know, as you said, because of the work we do as well, but that's really where it's showing up. Is in this social media, requirement or not requirement? But you know.
Tracy:Yeah, it's something that we've been talking about for a little while. So we used to be pretty big on X or Twitter, right, and, like you said, it was easier, not the place for our organization. So we want you to shift to another platform and I fought against it for a really long time because I knew this was going to be a challenge for us, that our audience, for our center at least, wasn't on Instagram professionally, yeah, and I knew how much work it took to create those images. And just, you have to think about your story in a completely different way. Oh yeah, even whether or not people interact can depend on how your visual hits them, right. If you're just reading a sentence, the visual part of it doesn't come in. If I see an image and the image turns me off, I don't listen to the message.
Katrina:Yeah, we also process images hundreds of times faster than we process text. Right, well, I was just going to say, our chance to keep our audience and reach that audience is also much more fleeting, in a way. So your stakes are bigger, I guess is what I'm saying.
Tracy:Right, and sometimes that's a good thing, right, it works both ways. So sometimes we can put a visual out there that's like oh, what is this? I need to stop and look at that where they might have just scrolled past text. So it goes both ways and I totally get that. But where the challenge is, I think goes back to it's not just students, it's the training throughout. Right, we haven't been always taught to think visually like that, and so it becomes more challenging to create because it takes more time. There's more skill involved. It's just a whole different way of approaching the science of the world.
Tracy:And then it becomes the question that you and I were struggling with yesterday is is the amount of time it's taking to create these things worth it? Is there enough ROI for all of the effort that has to go into this? And I don't know. I don't actually know the answer to that question, and it's something that we need to think about. I don't know yet if our audience for you know, and our audience is different for different platforms, I should say but if you're trying to reach researchers, I don't know that Instagram is the place. The problem is X isn't. So where is it? And we're stuck right now trying to figure out where that is. Yeah, and I'm still. I know lots of people. I'm in lots of calls with people across different organizations all over the world and a lot of people are wanting to go to LinkedIn because that's where a lot of people are right now. But I don't think that's where the researchers are and maybe they'll get there. You know, maybe they'll get there and they are there. Some, definitely some of the younger generation is there in different ways.
Tracy:But the amount of time and energy it takes when we are also having to cut back staff, which means I have to figure out do we have the capacity to do this and all the other things we're supposed to be doing, it's a struggle and it's something we don't have an answer to just quite yet.
Tracy:There's ways we can do it and you know where we're maybe not making as hard on ourselves and things like that. But it's an interesting time right now. I do think visuals can have a lot of power time. Right now, I do think visuals can have a lot of power. We're there because I decided okay, we can do this. We had somebody on our team who was really excited and wanted to embrace it and was doing a fantastic job at it, but then when she left and it fell on you and I to take it over, we can do it, we have the skills to do it. It's going to take us a little bit longer because we haven't been doing it in the space the way that our you know former employee had been doing it, but it takes time and it's taking time away from other things.
Katrina:Yeah, no, I and as the person who's kind of managing this at the moment, you know, just be perfectly transparent. I think it also matters whether the person running it enjoys this aspect. What I've learned is that I don't think my type of creativity is as visual as would be ideal for this type of social media management. I'm a writer. I like the written word. That's where my creativity comes is in the messaging and that kind of strategy.
Katrina:I am not the greatest with visuals. I have learned graphic design, but I don't have you know a million ideas, and so sometimes it's also hard for me, because I also want things to be new and fresh, and we both have a slight perfectionist streak when it comes to this, and so I want things to be interesting and the best we can possibly do, but I don't necessarily have the visual, creative skills to execute that all the time, and so I know I personally get frustrated when I have to go back to something that's been done just to get it out the door. You know, if we need that visual post, I don't like having to go back to a visual design or you know a template or things like that. Templates are good, but I always like to just do something to give it something different, and so I just get frustrated, and I think that's the other part of it is that if I'm going to do it, I want to do it a certain way, but that takes so much time and sometimes we can't even do it because we don't have the imagery we need, and I feel you know. Going to the AI issue, I don't know that that's always a good use of AI generation. You know to try generating stuff there. You know to try generating stuff there.
Katrina:So, yeah, just having had to manage this again recently, I'm just reminded of how many of us are actually not trained for the requirements of this particular aspect of health comm. So I know other people are probably feeling the same way, also dealing with what we're dealing with, with the funding environment, and, you know, seeing our team change, but I guess I also appreciate, though, the fact that we can talk about this without knowing what the answer is, and we will decide something. But I think this also goes back to our number one rule when we do our social media training is can you actually execute it? You know if you're going to do it. You know what you're getting into.
Katrina:As you said you had a person who wanted to do this, had the space for it. We were being kind of forced off our other platform. So I think it's highly individual whether it's a good time, you know, or a good thing to let it go. And again, we'll see where we go with it. But I just appreciate the fact that you're able to look at this and say is this actually a good use or do we let it go? And maybe not. And so maybe others are struggling with this too, and I will just be honest. What I needed to hear was it's okay to let it go. We are in a tough environment, and so it's okay to say it's too much and let it go, but it doesn't mean we have to give up everywhere, but be strategic about it, and that's what I think we're doing here.
Tracy:Yeah, and I think the other thing that I do want to make sure that we say as part of this is the other thing we teach about social media is who's your audience and where are they? So I strongly believe that if you are trying to reach certain public audiences, if you are not on social media, you are not going to reach them. So, if you're trying to reach teens, you probably need to think about whether or not you should be on Instagram or TikTok, and that's not a skill set that everybody is being taught. And even if you grew up with it, being a consumer of it and even being a producer of it for a personal account is very different than what you need to do to do it from an organizational account. Totally so, different skill set, different way of thinking about it, right? So I just want to be really clear that audience matters, and if you are trying to reach an audience that are on those spaces, you need to be there, whatever that looks like, whether that's utilizing interns, whether that's saying nope, I need to invest in this. How do I teach myself how to do this?
Tracy:Let's do it, yep, but in some spaces, I think the push is we need to be on social media, or we need to be on social media in this certain way, with a certain set of expectations, and maybe it is time for us to step back and say what are those expectations? Maybe we have a different set of guidelines, or is this the platform? We tried it. It's not working. For whatever reasons, it's not working and let's pivot to something else.
Katrina:Yeah, Well, I think you know just the audience for us for this particular channel. We're actually trying to reach it's more of other professionals, other people who work with children and families. They aren't necessarily the parents, the caregivers. You know the public, it's the people who work with them and so we message for that. Second, you know that audience of parents, caregivers or you know whomever that the target audience is. But the idea of this particular one is to help other people reach their audience, which is, again, probably caregivers and parents and things like that. So you know, for this one, if our audience is actually other kind of professionals and things like that.
Katrina:You know you talked about the fact that Instagram is often a personal social media channel. You know people don't want to engage in professional activities on their personal Instagram, which I totally get. So I guess I just wanted to explain why we were thinking about this is that we've looked at our audience. We actually have a really robust newsletter that gets a decent amount of opens. We have lots of ways to communicate with our audience, and so I think if we go in that direction, we're going to have to make sure that we're shoring up those spaces where we are reaching that audience in those other ways. But, as you said, the ROI on this, you know, maybe just isn't worth the time.
Tracy:Yeah, and it's something we're still exploring, absolutely.
Katrina:So, yeah, stay tuned.
Tracy:Right and the audiences are changing, so we have to make sure we're not jumping ship. If that's where everybody is going and I do think we were an early adopter in some ways to that space and we just wanted to have an honest conversation about some of the struggles that we are having and how difficult it is to be there and some of the challenges For this particular platform, our audience is people who are talking to parents and caregivers, not the parents and caregivers directly. It made sense to model some of the. This is what it can look like for that. Messaging Instagram's a little harder because with X you can just share, quote, tweet it, share things like that. That with Instagram it's a harder process- you can't just retweet. And what I've seen is a lot of the people who run those social media channels don't quite yet have the skills to know how to do the extra work it takes to take whatever message we have and then make it work for their account. They're learning and it's changing. The field is definitely I'm seeing people grow in this space and all of that. But things to think about. We're trying to follow our own advice. Yeah, know who your audience is, know what their skills are, know what your skills and resources are and go from there. W e'd actually love to hear from you. If you're listening to this and you're finding success or you're also struggling. Let us know, because we want to hear from others doing this work. How's this working for you? What are your struggles?
Katrina:Yeah, you know, I know we're not alone out there, so that's why we're doing this right. All right, I don't want to end on a downer, and so I would like to let everyone know that Tracy and I found a way to reframe an issue that we both were extremely happy with. So we have been working on this podcast for a while, we've been talking about it for a long time I mean a long time and so it's finally here. We're doing it, it's happening, and so we set a date, our go-live date, and the agreement was originally that, if we didn't meet that date, the one who kind of caused the problem owes the other one some type of dessert.
Katrina:Just for the record, Tracy asked for biscotti, because I make a biscotti and she makes me peanut butter pie for my birthday every year, and so I chose peanut butter pie, and so the idea was, if we don't make it, the other one bakes for the other. However, that's a negative frame, and we decided to change this up and make it a positive frame, and so now we are going to make each other our desserts. When we succeed, we're going to make this date, we're going to get everything launched, we're going to get going, and then we're going to deliver desserts to each other, and so I just want to mention that that actually really changed the motivation. Like weirdly, like an odd amount, I felt it as soon as we changed that. So I'm just curious did you? It made a difference, and not just because I'm now guaranteed, I mean, yes, I'm guaranteed peanut butter pie, but it just it actually felt different too.
Tracy:You can't see me right now, but I have a huge smile on my face and, yes, it absolutely changed for me as well, which is funny because it's something that we talk about in public health and how to motivate change. Seeing it in action this way was fantastic. It made a huge difference and I am more motivated to get my biscotti, to get my biscotti.
Katrina:And it, just, it, just it made me the meta-ness of all of it. I mean, we laughed definitely about this, but it is just really a great reminder that we ourselves are often the target audience and recognizing what motivates us. We might be a little more food motivated than others or not. Maybe everyone is as food motivated as we are. But yeah, just Now I get peanut butter pie and you get biscotti and we got this podcast. So positive frames versus negative frames, you know, in action.
Tracy:It definitely makes all the difference.
Katrina:All right, everyone. For time's sake, we are going to stop right there.
Tracy:As we come to the end of this episode, we would like to acknowledge how challenging some of this work can be. If we want people to understand public health, we do have to meet them where they are, and that is often on social media. But the platforms have changed and it's not just text anymore. Everything needs a visual and the truth is many of us in this field we just weren't trained for that, not to mention the fact that it takes a lot longer to create these impactful, eye-catching visuals than it does to just write some text we are being asked to create without the tools, the time or the training we really need. We're basically being asked to do more with less, and it is okay to talk about how hard that really is sometimes. The good news is that we can learn together and support each other in this work. The more we talk about it, the more we share ideas and tools and lessons learned, the better we're all going to get at reaching people in ways that truly connect and really make a difference.
Katrina:So that's it for today. If you want to hear more from us, please subscribe to the podcast and like this episode. It helps us reach more people like you and, honestly, it just feels good to check the stats and see that we created something that somebody else valued. Comments are always welcome, either on the platform you're listening on now or you can use the link in the show notes to text us directly. We're on LinkedIn, blue Sky and YouTube as CIRTC. That's C-I-R-T-C, so you can find us there as well.
Tracy:So we promised a treat if you made it to the end. If you want the recipes for our almond biscotti and peanut butter pie, you can get them on a hidden page on our website as a special treat for our listeners.
Katrina:Go to C-I-R-T-C dot org. Forward slash secret recipes. All one word. CIRTC. org/secretrecipes. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening and happy baking.
