Developing and Implementing News and Digital Media Strategies

Background:   In mid-April 2009, CDC scientists confirmed the existence of a new influenza virus; a virus that had caused illness in a number of young people and that had the potential to create a pandemic. Beginning with the discovery of the virus, and continuing throughout the result pandemic and vaccination efforts, news media have been central to the CDC and public health response.

Program background:  Early on, it was anticipated that news media interest and coverage was likely to be extensive, sustained and sometimes quite variable.  As such, a concerted effort was made to ensure that media relations efforts and approaches had a strong foundation, clear goals and objectives, focused on both the short-term and long-term, and revolved around sound messages.  Risk communication principles, immunization communication best practices, news media conventions and environmental monitoring provided the foundation, with the guiding media relations goals and objectives including prompt provision of information, putting available information into helpful context, achieving broad and accurate awareness of public health actions and recommendations, and fostering adoption of public health recommendations, including immunization.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Media relations efforts and messages were informed and guided by a number of information sources, including media monitoring and content analyses, interations with members of the media, public opinion surveys, focus group and in-depth interviews with population subgroups (e.g., parents, health care providers), website statistics and CDC hotline call inquiry summaries.

Conclusions:  In reviewing CDC's media relations efforts and messaging, there have been a number of important "lessons learned," including: 1) while uncertainties are likely many, early acknowledgement of a scientific discovery with public health implications can greatly facilitate an effective media relations response; 2) an aggressive, proactive media strategy is needed to effectively manage a public health response to pandemic influenza, with such a strategy needing to be employed quickly; 3) frequent/regular interaction with the news media is essential throughout all phases of a pandemic; 4) much planning and effort needs to be invested in media messaging; 5) risk communication principles, health communicatoin best practices and ongoing media and audience monitoring provide a strong and effective foundation for news media strategies and messaging; 6) proactive media relations strategies need to be a part of the overall news media effort; and 7) extensive, ongoing collaboration with internal and external partners is a key component of an effective long-term media response.

Implications for research and/or practice: The media interactions and experiences over the 12+ months of the 2009 H1N1 response are highly instructive when it comes to designing and implementing news media strategies (including messages) in response to infectious disease threats and outbreaks. The lessons learned during this response are applicable not only to future pandemics, but to seasonal influenza efforts, other infectious disease outbreaks and food-borne disease outbreaks. Public health and other agencies responsible for communicating to the public shoudl be aware of these lessons and ready to apply them to their seasonal influenza efforts as well as utilize them should their jurisdictions be faced with a potentially significant or long-term infectious or food-borne disease outbreak.