Popular epidemiologist lays out future path of public health communication

Katelyn Jetelina, a popular epidemiologist and data scientist whose newsletter “Your Local Epidemiologist” has more than 200,000 subscribers, recently visited the Yale School of Public Health to deliver a lecture entitled “Reimagining Public Health Communication in the 21^st Century.”

A scientific consultant to a number of organizations including the White House and CDC, Jetelina visited YSPH on Dec 11 as part of Dean Megan L. Ranney’s new “Leaders in Public Health” speaker series. Her popular newsletter is known for its easy-to-read translation of the latest news and issues in public health science.

During the event, Jetelina addressed the widening communication gap between those in the field of public health and the communities they serve. She also offered ideas for how to deliver public health information more effectively, understandably, and appropriately at a time when polls show there is significant mistrust in science and lots of misleading information on the internet.

“We’re not very good at getting information to the community,” Jetelina said. “There are things that are actively making this gap widen. Then disinformation and misinformation sneak in and the community cannot make evidence-based decisions.”

Jetelina shared what she called her “checklist” of the five most important actions necessary for bringing public health communications into the 21st century.

Watch Dr. Jetelina's full presentation here.

“We have a saying that when public health works, it's invisible,” Jetelina said. “But we have to get out of this mindset. We have to start communicating — and not just with each other, scientist-to-scientist. We need to be better at talking to the communities we serve.”

Learning how to communicate, she said, needs to be a part of a public health education. “I was never trained in scientific communication,” said Jetelina, who has a PhD and MPH from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “I never took a course on it. I was never taught how to write policy briefs or how to put together a viral TikTok. We need to integrate communication at our core.”

Jetelina stressed the importance of recognizing that a public health worker’s audience is not merely a target. “It is an active participant in public health and in our communications,” she said.

“Opening up a two-way street is acknowledging that legitimate concerns do exist and that we have failed groups in the past…,” she said. “We cannot be alienating. We have to be empathetic. Part of being inclusive is recognizing that what you say matters, especially to people who are hesitant.”

Jetelina pointed out that many people no longer get their information from the news media, and that only 30 percent of Americans say they trust the news media overall. “Social media is a huge part of how people get their health care related news,” she said. “In fact, close to 50 percent of Americans get their health information from social media, and misinformation or false news goes farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth.”

Jetelina also stressed the importance of acting quickly. “Messaging is too slow and it's too scant to meet the needs of the public to make decisions today,” she said. “So, those of us in public health need to get a whole lot more comfortable communicating quickly, continuously, and with empathy. We need to not only look for questions, but actively search for questions, and be proactive on social media. People are asking thousands of questions a day. We need to meet people where they're at.”

“There’s a really strong desire in science, but more so in public health, to avoid politics, historically,” Jetelina said. “But achieving public health goals depends on sustained constructive engagement between public health and political systems.”

Said Jetelina: “Public health is inherently political. Policy isn't just based on science. It's also based on morals. It's based on psychology. It's based on values. It's based on culture. And we as scientists, need to understand that.

"We need to avoid partisanship and recognize that most advancements in public health policies in past generations have been bipartisan. And we also need to choose the right battles. We need to make strategic choices about which battles to fight.”

Jetelina talked about how public-private partnerships can help with more effective communication. “We somehow need to reach every single household in the United States, and in order to do that, we need to build capacity to communicate more effectively and more responsively,” she said. “This is where innovation comes in — in public-private partnerships.”

“How can public health work with Google?” she asked. “How can public health work with YouTube or Facebook? How can we leverage private-public partnerships to do better data storytelling. How are we leveraging AI right now in public health, particularly communications? We need to get much more comfortable with this in public health.”