You’ve Got a Friend in Media: How Public Health Partnerships with Media Professionals Can Transform Coverage of IVP and Trauma

Overview:

Unintentional injuries and violence are often highly newsworthy, and media coverage has a profound effect on how communities understand and address these issues. Media professionals have demonstrated strength in humanizing story subjects, elevating overlooked public health problems, and pushing elected officials to take action on headlining issues. However, the pressure of deadlines and limited access to/awareness of public health data or effective interventions can result in stories that leave people feeling hopeless, helpless or unaffected. Public health can assist the media in contextualizing injuries and violence and provide evidence-based prevention strategies. Compelling solutions-oriented stories can galvanize community- and systems-level change to address shared risk and protective factors for injury and violence.

 

The Louisiana Core State Violence and Injury Prevention Program (Core SVIPP) and Tulane University’s Violence Prevention Institute hosted a workshop for media professionals on reporting sensitive, complex topics related to violence and trauma. The workshop taught media professionals how to reframe their reporting to illuminate the driving forces behind injury and violence, highlight prevention strategies, and encourage productive public discourse. Preliminary evaluation results showed that the workshop was well-received, and revealed additional opportunities to build effective relationships between public health and media professionals.

 

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this webinar, participants will understand:

1. Explain how media coverage of injuries, violence and trauma can help or hurt public health efforts around these issues.


2. Understand how partnerships with media professionals can fit into a shared risk and protective factor approach to preventing and reducing injuries and violence.

 

3. Assess their agency’s capacity to plan and host a workshop for news media professionals in their community, region or state based on available resources, budget, and time.

 

Presenters:

  • Chloe Lake, Health Education & Communications Coordinator, Louisiana Department of Health
  • Kristen Sanderson, Prevention Initiatives Coordinator, Louisiana Department of Health

 

Continuing Education:

This self-study training is designated for: (1) Certified Health Education Specialists (CHES) and/or Master Certified Health Education Specialists (MCHES) to receive up to 1.0 total Category I continuing education contact hour, and (2) for professionals with a Certificate of Public Health (CPH) to receive 1.0 CPH Recertification Credit.

Continuing education credits are offered for this training for Safe States members. These include credits for individuals who are Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Certified in Public Health (CPH)

 

Training Instructions

To complete this training, you will need to:

  1. Participate in the training by accessing the Recorded Webinar
  2. View Powerpoint slides: You’ve Got a Friend in Media – SafeStates 2019
  3. Create your Certificate of Completion.

 

If you encounter any technical difficulties related to this training, please contact the Safe States Alliance at info@safestates.org or (770) 690-9000.

#Prevention: How State and Local Health Departments Can Capitalize on Social Media

The theme for the 2012 ASTHO, NACCHO, & Safe States Alliance webcast series is “Using Communication and Media to Prevent Injuries & Violence.”

This is the second of the three-part webinar series. Web- and mobile-based media platforms can help public health practitioners communicate personalized and targeted health messages, particularly among populations that rely on wireless technologies to interact and exchange information. By leveraging social media channels, state and local public health agencies have opportunities to use these innovative technologies to publicly communicate messages that are accurate, actionable, and science-based. However, while these opportunities exist, public health professionals are still determining best practices for effectively utilizing social media to communicate with decision-makers and the public.

 

This webcast will highlight three organizations that have been studying and utilizing social media to strategically and successfully engage and communicate with the public. During this webcast, participants will:

Learn ways public health agencies have used social media platforms;

Understand benefits and challenges of using social media; and

Gain new ideas for reaching decision-makers, partners, and members of the public using social media technologies.

 

The three webinars in this series are: Webinar 1: Making the Front Page: Using Media Strategies to Promote Injury and Violence Prevention Programs, Webinar 2: #Prevention: How State and Local Health Departments Can Capitalize on Social Media, Webinar 3: Evaluating Web-Based Public Health and Public Awareness Campaigns

 

Continuing education credits are offered for this training for Safe States members. These include credits for individuals who are Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Certified in Public Health (CPH)