#healthcommunication – Public Health Writing Program

Becoming a Public Health Writer

Writing for a particular audience, to fulfill a specific need, and using clear, concise language that is easy to read and understand. These are the hallmarks of public health writing. Or maybe I should say they are the goals, the things every public health writer should be thinking about and striving for when they sit down at their keyboard. But being a clear, concise writer who engages reader interest while providing necessary information and analysis, is not simply a matter of sitting down and starting to type.

Most of us need to write many drafts, revising as we go, seeking feedback, and then revising again. This is true for all writing, but public health writers face the particular challenge of translating complex topics, science, and numbers in a way that is clear, concise, and engaging. This is not easy. The source documents we use are often so packed with jargon, abbreviations, and long passive sentences that making sense of them requires specialized training, extraordinary patience, and focus.

I say all of this to comfort rather than scare you away. As you embark on your journey as a public health student, you may find yourself struggling to understand a research article and write about it in a way that makes sense to you and will be useful to your reader. You are not alone. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the challenges we all face in our role as public health communicators into stark focus. The words we use matter as do the nuances and details we choose to include.

The constant critiques of Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are a useful case in point. In the first couple months of 2022, Americans were frustrated with Dr. Wolensky, the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and President Biden for the rapid spread of the omicron variant, for the quick change in isolation guidelines from 10 days to 5, for the shortage of self-testing kits, for the new focus on surgical-quality masks, for what some see as the broken promise that vaccination will end the pandemic.

It’s easy to throw stones at other communicators for falling short, and there are many ways in which official messaging might have been executed more strategically and with a better awareness of the cognitive biases that drive human behavior. The communication coaching Dr. Walensky promised to engage in seems to have helped. You may remember that she shifted her messaging about masks: taking a break when risk is low, setting them aside, but keeping them nearby so we can reach for them again when needed. She has made her messaging more nuanced than it was in the past. But the balance between nuance and confusion is delicate. No matter how crystalline her messaging, she was in a no-win communication situation. Could she and the federal government have done better? Certainly. Will anyone attain perfect communication about a constantly changing virus in a fraught political context. No.

Most of us will never have a global platform. And we can take some comfort in that relative anonymity. But it doesn’t mean that we can justify lazy or haphazard writing. Covid put all public health professionals and researchers under the microscope. Now more than ever, we all need to approach our writing with a fine balance of confidence and humility. Confidence that we have something useful to contribute. And humble acceptance that we will always be in the process of trying to get it right.

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We’re revamping the Public Health Writing Guide. Watch the Public Health Writing Blog for new sections every week.

Quote Rarely, Paraphrase Often, Cite Generously (Part 1/2)

Part 1: Quoting the Words of Others in Public Health Writing

Do your best to avoid direct quotations when writing papers in your public health classes. It’s a comment I find myself making again and again on the first round or two of papers submitted by public health graduate students in their first semester. Quotations should be special, I explain. Enclosing someone else’s words in inverted commas draws attention to the exact language they used. You are signaling to your reader that the words and syntax matter as much as the point you are trying to make.

Quote the language of law and policy when you need to explain and analyze it. Quote the language of multi-media campaigns. Use the words of real people (from qualitative research and journalism) when the words themselves offer a window into thoughts, experience, perspective. Quote the words of public figures when you are analyzing their motives, when holding them accountable. On rare occasions, quote a sentence or two from a journal article or book because those exact words sharpen the point you are trying to make in a way that your own words will not.

Quotations should always add value. If they don’t, paraphrase.

All public health writing is essentially an act of translation. The writer is pulling key information on a given topic together to answer a question for a particular audience. Sometimes that reader is a real person, sitting at a desk waiting for our email attachment. She has asked us to gather and synthesize information because she needs it for a proposal, a presentation, a report, or an article. She may be in the process of creating a budget for the coming year and in need of information that will help her decide how to allocate funds for prevention, treatment, or a community program. In other cases, your readers may be a more general audience, looking for information on a topic they want to understand.

In either case, a document that simply strings together large chunks of other people’s words is not useful. Your readers are looking to you to do the work, to transform the information into simple language, to pull together information from multiple sources, and different types of sources so they don’t have to.

When I was an MPH student, I was one of those students who turned in papers filled with quotes. And I was surprised by my professors’ recommendations that I drop the habit. Before deciding to get an MPH, I studied English literature. The words of others, of the authors I was studying, were my data. Start with a quote then analyze the words in front of you and their relationship to other parts of the book and to dialogue, character development, or story arc. For me, paraphrasing often meant providing a gloss of the story’s connective tissue, the historical context it was bringing to life, or its connections to other works by the same author or her peers.

In other words, my thirteen years of previous graduate and undergraduate study (PhD, MA, and BA) had trained me to lean on the words of others. In the MPH program, I had to unlearn all I thought I knew about writing. Becoming more comfortable with and understanding the role of paraphrasing was just one of the many aspects of writing I needed to rethink and practice.

If you are a frustrated student in a similar situation, I hope you will take heart from my story. With practice (usually in response to feedback from professors and colleagues), I did adjust. My writing is now clearer and I feel more in control of what I am saying because I am processing new, complex information more directly and then talking about it in my own voice, for my own purposes. That doesn’t mean I find the process easy. I often struggle to understand the technical jargon and data speak of much of the public health literature I read, so I am always translating for myself first.

If you are a professor who is perplexed by a run of papers laden with quotation marks, consider devoting a few minutes in class to talk about the best uses for quotations in public health writing. And talk about when and how you use quotations in your own writing. When does it work for you? When do you find yourself doing it? What strategies do you have for paraphrasing?

Click here for Part 2: Translating the Words of Others and Crediting Sources

Good news! The Public Health Writing Program has New Webpage and Social Media Campaign

The Public Health Writing Program has truly arrived. We've been working hard to support BUSPH students, faculty, and staff for the last six years.

But today marks the beginning of a new era. We are launching a new webpage and social media campaign. The days of creative Google searches and a lot of clicking to find all the writing resources we offer here at BUSPH are over. Visit our landing page to learn about the mission and scope of the Public Health Writing Program, writing and library workshops, our Peer Writing Coach Program, library resources and tutorials, resources for faculty and staff, and much more.

We want everyone in our community to write every day, to think of writing as a process and a practice (rather than a product). Follow us on Instagram and Twitter for writing tips, inspiration, information about resources, and constant encouragement to stop procrastinating and sit down to write.

I hope you will join us as we embark on this exciting journey. Think. Teach. Write. For the Health of All.

The Public Health Writing Program Has a Blog!

Welcome to the Public Health Writing Program blog, which I have affectionately titled, Think. Teach. Write. For the Health of All. Watch this space for regular updates on events and resources. This is also the place where I will post weekly musings about writing, language, reading, and more.

Let's build a community conversation about what public health writing is, why it’s important to think of writing as a practice and process (not just a product), how to overcome the many challenges we face when we sit down to write, how to get help, and why it’s important to reach out, share your work, and ask for feedback.