Public Health System Transformation Update Newsletter
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What's On Our Radar?

Try out some of these recommendations from the Joint Leadership Team for Public Health System Transformation. 

The Joint Leadership Team originally shared these resources in the Public Health System Transformation Update Newsletter.

Please note: The views expressed in these resources are those of the specific authors and organizations creating these resources, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Joint Leadership Team, its members, or its represented sectors.

April 2025

Inspiring Partners to Strengthen Public Health in Minnesota: A Message Toolkit for You

Toolkit | Joint Leadership Team for System Transformation in Minnesota and Hattaway Communications

This message toolkit was developed specifically for Minnesota’s public health leaders, program staff, and allies in 2024, based on interviews with public health staff, elected officials, and community organizations. It includes research-based steps to help you build communications so people can understand your work in public health and why Minnesota’s public health system needs a new approach. Over 600 of your colleagues in Minnesota have used this toolkit in workshops to develop communications about their work, grounded in shared vision and goals. 

Schedule a free workshop for your health department or division by contacting the MDH Center for Public Health Practice: health.ophp@state.mn.us. At this time, workshops are open to local and Tribal health departments in Minnesota and to MDH staff.          

Communicating About Public Health: A Toolkit for Public Health Professionals

Toolkit | de Beaumont Foundation

Leaders, directors, and administrators, this toolkit is for you. It includes scenarios you might encounter in your professional life, when people don’t understand what public health is or does, and easy to remember, research-tested messaging to fill those gaps.          

Countering Chaos and Manufactured Controversy in Health

Webinar (1 hour) | FrameWorks Institute and Society for Health Communication

Unsure how to counter misinformation you hear about what public health does or doesn’t do? Recent manufactured controversies in public and population health include vaccine safety, DEI, transgender health, and more. How can public health communicators be equipped to diagnose and respond more efficiently and effectively to disinformation, misinformation, and manufactured controversies? This session moves from theory to practice, outlining a conceptual framework for understanding the stages of moral panics and illustrating strategies and tactics for interrupting them.          

Public Health Communications Collaborative

Resource

If you have communications staff, send them over to the Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC). There, they’ll find timely, relevant, and practical tools, messaging, and training to support and enhance their skill and capacity with webinars, downloadable tools and guides, and more.

September 2024

Building a Legacy of Health: Transforming the Health and Wellbeing of Our Communities

Issue Briefs | National Association of Counties

In partnership with the de Beaumont Foundation, NACo offers insights and actionable strategies to help county leaders build a legacy of health in our communities—beyond increasing access to clinical care. Explore four briefs and discover how targeted public health investments can transform your community and drive economic growth.

Framing the Foundation of Community Health 

Toolkit | FrameWorks Institute

To appreciate why communicating about public health to other sectors is so important, and also how treacherous it can be, we need to understand how professionals in other sectors think. This communications toolkit for all public health workers and leaders (not just communicators) can help identify gaps and overlaps in thinking between different sectors, and help us strategically focus our framing efforts.

Making the Case for Public Health

Webinar (recorded) | Act for Public Health

In this free, hour-long webinar, experts from the Berkeley Media Studies Group and Real Language offer framing and communication recommendations to help public health advocates develop and deliver messages on the significance of public health as well as counteract legislation that would undermine public health authority. You can also download tools and worksheets to help you break down a communications strategy.

Managing rumors and misinformation

Live webinar series: October 2024 | Minnesota Dept. of Health

Join MDH staff for a free webinar series to learn about ways to prevent and respond to rumors and misinformation. This series will review the impacts of rumors and misinformation and how you can work to prevent, mitigate, and manage them. Module 1: Engaging with partners and networks (Oct. 10, 2024); Module 2: Using technology to conduct social listening (Oct. 17, 2024); Module 3: Delivering strategic and impactful communications (Oct. 24, 2024). 

Can't attend these live classes? Check out a free, hour-long recorded webinar from the Public Health Communications Collaborative, When and How to Respond to Public Health Misinformation, inspired by the popularity and utility of the PHCC Misinformation Alerts tool.

Focus on Public Health Services and Resource Sharing

Live webinar series: September-November 2024 | Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB)

Join PHAB for a four-part series of learning sessions on sharing services and resources. As health departments strive to increase capacity, carry out foundational public health responsibilities, and enhance service effectiveness, it can be helpful to explore formal and informal ways to share resources, insights, expertise, tools, and techniques across organizational boundaries. Learning sessions started this month and run through November.

June 2024

Plain Talk About… 

Communications Helpers | National League of Cities

Even if you’re not a city staffer or leader, you may find these resources helpful on communicating clearly and meaningfully, from the National League of Cities. Communicating about the concepts below can be tricky, because we all bring different values, mindsets, experiences, and beliefs to each concept, as do our colleagues and neighbors. When we can connect with others with clarity and meaning, we can help grow support for public and population health. Before you draft a presentation, talking points, or an email, try putting yourself in the shoes of the person or people on the other end with these tips and tricks:

• Community health: Communicating Clearly About Community Health
• Well-being: What’s Local Government’s Role in Community Well-being?
• Health equity: How to Talk About Health Equity as a City Leader
• Systems: What Does "Systems Change" Actually Mean?

May 2024

Service and Resource Sharing Approaches – Focus on the Public Health Workforce 

Webinar | Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) 

This webinar focuses on service and resource sharing approaches addressing common public health workforce challenges, such as capacity building, retention, pipelines, and succession planning; training and expertise in organizational competencies and diversity, equity, and inclusion; and rebuilding trust with the public, among others.

Talking Health: A New Way to Communicate about Public Health 

Book | de Beaumont Foundation, 2022

If you can’t wait for this summer’s message toolkit to help Minnesota’s public health workforce talk about the role and value of public health, you can preview similar concepts in Talking Health. Each chapter in this book covers a different theory or method, to help you and your colleagues strategically communicate about public health in ways that bridge the divide between public health and other sectors.

April 2024

The Invisible Shield

TV/online | Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

This four-part documentary series, reveals a little-known truth: that public health saved your life today and you probably don’t even know it. But while public health makes modern life possible, the work itself is often underfunded, undervalued, and misunderstood.

Building Strategic Skills for Better Health: A Primer for Public Health Professionals 

Book | Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO)

This book is a dynamic guide for implementing and developing leadership, management, and advocacy skills to transform public health work across disease-focused services toward integrated population health initiatives. Authored by key leaders in public health, this professional primer defines nine essential strategic skills for effective public health practice across public health specialties like systems and strategic thinking, effective communication, community engagement, and more.

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