Communications Accomplishments and Progress

Overview

Our communications goal: Promote and strengthen trust in public health information.

To achieve our communications goal, we set four specific objectives:

• Inform public health discourse and decision-making through thought leadership globally and locally.
• Increase the reach and impact of our research with new and innovative communications strategies.
• Develop a training infrastructure to teach faculty, staff, and students to be trusted and authentic public health communicators.
• Deepen relationships with local communities, sharing Rollins’ public health findings with Georgia residents to help them advance their own health goals.

At a time when it is more important than ever to ensure accurate and trustworthy public health information is available to the public, we are thrilled that in just the past six months, we have made major strides within each of these areas.

At a foundational level, to support our overarching communications goal and main objectives, we have strengthened and evolved the Rollins communications team—adding critical team members and positioning all staff in the right roles.

With a strong communications team in place, we have been able to bolster our ability to support communications needs across Rollins. In terms of enhancing our thought leadership, we have significantly improved Rollins faculty and researcher engagement with the media—increasing media access to our experts and our overall impressions in major press outlets. And we have launched new faculty media training programs as well as strengthened how we support faculty in engaging with the media on an ongoing basis.

Over the past six months, we have developed a multitude of new and innovative communications strategies to increase the reach and impact of our research. Highlights include launching a highly successful new Rollins public health and science communications focused Instagram account, evolving our Rollins Magazine—expanding its reach and reshaping its focus, and increasing the frequency of Rollins news content, as well as developing new article types.

Since September 2023, we have also kicked off a number of public health and science communication training initiatives to teach faculty, staff, and students to be trusted and authentic public health communicators. These efforts have included in-house media training as well as partnering with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. We have provided training through one-on-one sessions, small-group workshops, guest lectures, and recorded seminars.

And we continue to prioritize community-centered content—both to strengthen our relationships with all communities and to share Rollins’ public health findings with Georgia residents to help them advance their own health goals. We regularly publish content on our new Instagram channel to address timely topics and combat misinformation and disinformation that circulates within local communities.

Key Achievements

Inform public health discourse and decision-making through thought leadership globally and locally.

• Supported more than 100 one-on-one conversations between Rollins faculty and media from Sept. 2023-Feb 2024.
• Developed a new Rollins experts web page to make it easier for media and policymakers to find and connect with our faculty and researchers.

Increase the reach and impact of our research with new and innovative communications strategies.

• Created a new Rollins Instagram channel, which gained 20K followers since launch and has a very high level of engagement, with many posts receiving between 1K and 2K likes.
• Started a new Ask An Expert article series.
• Evolved the Rollins Magazine—expanding its reach and reshaping its focus.
• Revamped the monthly Rollins Public Health News newsletter to be more engaging and easier to consume across devices.
• Published new article types to more web-friendly and easy-to-scan, and to cover more topics relevant to Rollins and trending public health topics.

Develop a training infrastructure to teach faculty, staff, and students to be trusted and authentic public health communicators.

• Launched the Rollins science communication lecture series: SciComm Together
• Hosted the Alan Alda Science Communications 2-day workshop—training 25 faculty.
• Provided 3-5 individual faculty media interview prep sessions each month from Sept. 2023-Feb. 2024
• Conducted four in-house media trainings from Sept. 2023-Feb. 2024—training 20 faculty in live sessions and providing a recorded session to more than 100 CRT faculty. The small-group sessions were three-hour trainings that included on-camera practice.
• Gave guest lectures about science communication and working with the media in specific Rollins classes. Taught three sessions during fall semester 2023, training approximately 200 Rollins students.

Deepen relationships with local communities, sharing Rollins’ public health findings with Georgia residents to help them advance their own health goals.

• Posted public health information to new Rollins Instagram channel, which gained 20K followers since launch and has a very high level of engagement, with many posts receiving between 1K and 2K likes.