Communicating about Public Health: A Toolkit for Public Health Professionals

The de Beaumont Foundation’s new Communicating about Public Health: A Toolkit for Public Health Professionals is a research-based resource that equips public health workers with practical messaging strategies to support public understanding of critical public health work.

The Foundation and its research partner CommunicateHealth identified five core concepts about the purpose and value of public health that are generally not understood:

• Public health works at the community level, while health care works at the individual level.
• Public health focuses on preventing people from getting sick or hurt.
• Public health workers serve their local communities.
• Public health workers play a variety of professional roles — and many work behind the scenes.
• Public health benefits everyone.

The toolkit includes:

• research-tested messaging to explain public health’s role and benefits to the public.
• practical examples of public health’s impact on communities.
• ready-to-use language to resonate with different audiences.
• proven best practices and resources for communicating effectively in a variety of situations.