Launching the Burness Public Health Creator Fellowship
The Challenge
Public health is under coordinated attack: Agencies are being defunded, science discredited, data collection restricted and core principles politicized. To counter these damaging activities, it is essential that the general public both understands the crucial role public health plays in keeping their communities safe and healthy and continues to have access to evidence-based information to support their own health. This requires disseminating information in the places where people spend their time and by messengers they trust, which, these days, means digital and social media.
Independent content creators are transforming how people get their news and information – public health is no exception. These digital storytellers bring issues directly to their audiences, sparking conversations and shaping opinions in real time. Public health leaders and content creators need to strengthen and expand their relationships with one another and find opportunities for timely, consistent and robust collaboration.
Our Approach
Burness, in collaboration with the American Public Health Association (APHA) created the Burness Public Health Creator Fellowship. Designed as an opportunity to leverage APHA’s annual meeting, one of the largest domestic public health gatherings, the fellowship offered creators the opportunity to connect with leaders shaping the country’s public health agenda on critical issues ranging from vaccines and misinformation to climate change and nutrition; build connections and their network; create public health-centric content during a key moment; and showcase the future of digital storytelling, journalism, and public health on a national stage.
To recruit our group of inaugural fellows, Burness spearheaded a competitive application process. Burness promoted the application through its own channels, but also partnered with other groups in the health, creator and equity spaces to help ensure a large and diverse set of application submissions. We had a clear set of criteria for potential candidates and the overall group of fellows, which informed our approach to vetting and interviewing applicants.
Results and Impact
The inaugural group of Burness Public Health Creator Fellows comprised a dynamic group of six creators highly skilled at harnessing the power and reach of social media to bring creative, easy-to-understand health news to their dedicated audiences across a diverse set of issues from reproductive and women’s health to nutrition and food access to the lived experience of patients with sickle cell disease.
The fellows were featured in a well-attended panel session, moderated by leading health creator, Katelyn Jetelina, of Your Local Epidemiologist. The session shed light on how creators work; the ways they build trust and engagement with their audiences; and the importance of being authentic, honest and tenacious when it comes to shifting narratives and fighting misinformation.
A very lively question and answer session followed the panel discussion and both the creators and participants left feeling energized with ideas about ways to forge even stronger connections.