How Should We Talk to Each Other: Understanding the Communication Needs of Public Health Professionals

Background:

CDC’s Public Health Professionals Gateway is a portal for state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) public health professionals. After eight years, the site became cumbersome, its design felt stagnant, and periodic user feedback revealed a need to enhance its organization and usefulness. It needed a redesign informed by its target audience: public health professionals. Although extensive research into health consumers’ and clinicians’ communication needs exists, few data were available about health department staff’s communication needs and experiences.

Program background:

CDC’s Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support (CSTLTS) improves community health outcomes by strengthening state, tribal, local, and territorial public health agencies. The Public Health Professionals Gateway is CSTLTS’s flagship website, centralizing information about public health programs; public health performance improvement; public health data sources; state-specific laws, policies, and practices; the US public health system; federal funding opportunities; best practices and success stories; and customizable resources.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

The CSTLTS team implemented a multi-methods data collection and analysis to increase understanding of public health professionals’ unique information and communication needs, including—

• An online user survey of STLT health agency professionals
• Phone interviews with a subset of users
• Detailed analysis of website metrics over time
• Heuristic review and content audits
• Listening sessions with key audience groups
• CSTLTS stakeholder interviews
• A card-sorting exercise to organize and label website content and topics

Results showed that STLT professionals are looking for information focused on technical topics, particularly best practices and public health training opportunities. More than half of survey respondents identified research reports, adaptable materials, and guidance documents as desired formats. Results also showed that public health professionals organized the site’s information similarly to their federal counterparts—necessitating refinement, not overhaul, of the site’s navigation.

Conclusions:

The data collection and analysis showed that STLT public health professionals have different needs and experiences than other core CDC audiences. CSTLTS learned more about professionals’ preferred web content and formats and how they understand, mentally organize, and navigate online information. These findings were used to reorganize key portions of the website, create new sections, update content, rename sections and pages with titles that resonated with users, and give the site a new name and address. Other communicators targeting this audience can use the results to inform efforts to provide readily accessible resources and information.

Implications for research and/or practice:

Successful public health practice depends on all parts of the public health system working well together. Communication is a critical factor in the system’s success, helping different agencies and jurisdictions share knowledge, leverage resources, and multiply efforts. While little data is available about the audience needs of public health professionals, communicators should understand those needs to ensure effective, actionable communication support for public health colleagues. CSTLTS is sharing the results of this project to help communicators focus their efforts and resources to inform, educate, and empower public health professionals, and contribute to ensuring a competent public health workforce and improved community health outcomes.