Voices and Stories: How the Inform Me, Informatics Podcast Brings an Emerging Field to Life

Background:  In 2015 and 2016, the Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII) worked with the FrameWorks Institute to conduct research on perceptions of the public health informatics field. This research revealed a significant knowledge gap between the general public health workforce and experts in the field about what public health informatics entails. Many public health practitioners think of informatics as a set of technological tools rather than a scientific field in which people work. The research emphasized the need to highlight the people behind the work of informatics in order to accurately characterize and communicate the value of this emerging field more fully to the public health workforce.

Program background:  In late 2015, PHII began planning a new podcast, Inform Me, Informatics, that would tell the stories of public health informatics practitioners (www.phii.org/podcast). The first episode, an interview with then-PHII Director Dave Ross, was published in January 2016. Since then, the podcast has run a number of diverse and illuminating stories: Minnesota’s immunization information system (IIS) staff’s use of data to identify and bridge health equity gaps; a former CDC EIS officer’s journey from disease detective to informatician; how the Chicago Department of Health used electronic case reporting to improve their city’s STI surveillance; and many others. The podcast team identifies potential new topics by considering whether a particular story will illuminate the topic of informatics while remaining accessible, and whether it demonstrates how informatics can help public health agencies do their work and achieve better outcomes.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  As of April 2017, the podcast published 13 episodes and one bonus episode (with episode #14 planned for release by the end of the month), with more than 5,000 total downloads. PHII will continue releasing about one episode per month throughout 2017. These episodes explain what public health informatics is, highlight professionals in the field, and illustrate why informatics is important to public health practice. 

Conclusions:  Faced with the challenge of communicating a largely invisible field, PHII created a podcast to help build a better understanding of public health informatics among the public health workforce. The podcast’s subscription rate indicates that this effort has so far been successful, and PHII has also received positive individual feedback from individuals in the field who are listeners. The podcast has been used as an informatics teaching tool by universities and other education institutions, including the University of Pittsburgh’s Mid Atlantic Regional Public Health Training Center.  

Implications for research and/or practice:  Podcasts are a relatively new medium, having existed for a little over a decade and only growing in popularity in more recent years. Because they are free and easily accessible to the general public, podcasts offer an unprecedented opportunity to communicators to disseminate their messages to a wide audience through a creative and growing platform. PHII’s experience using a podcast as a storytelling medium to bridge communications gaps could inform similar efforts from other organizations; from smoking cessation campaigns to flu shot promotion, podcasts hold immense potential as a way to spread essential public health messages.