Reaching New and Existing Stakeholders to Participate in BioSense Real Time Real Talk (RTRT)

BioSense is the national public health surveillance program hosted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It is designed to improve the nation’s capability for disease control and monitoring through access to real-time healthcare data from healthcare organizations.

Real Time Real Talk (RTRT) quarterly teleconference calls were created as a forum for CDC to answer questions and provide updates about BioSense. Stakeholder feedback demonstrates increased satisfaction related to interacting with BioSense program leadership and peers.  CDC has used input from stakeholders and new communication strategies to initiate and sustain BioSense stakeholders’ engagement in RTRT. 

CDC aims to build audience participation and drive feedback from stakeholders in an open dialog forum. Secondly, promote the sharing of best practices and strengthen support of the BioSense program.

Strategies for building partnership participation in RTRT included performing a needs assessment, with interviews of BioSense users and CDC personnel, brainstorming of communications techniques among communications experts, and internal analysis of previous RTRT meetings.

Findings from the needs assessment, internal interviews, and examination of lessons learned led to the development of recommendations for RTRT.   These recommendations indicated which aspects of RTRT to modify, such as format and content and how to address different learning styles. As a result, RTRT has been enhanced to appeal to broader audiences. Preliminary outcomes from RTRT modifications include more frequent interactions between stakeholders presenting their BioSense success stories, and increased partnership networking. For instance, stakeholders have been asked to share those experiences with other stakeholders at professional meetings and conferences. Podcast and webinars were created from stakeholders sharing their best practice experiences on RTRT.

The process of sharing information across public health regions and energizing stakeholders about BioSense will be discussed in an effort to enhance program support and partnership collaboration. Marketing and evaluation strategies of RTRT will also be discussed.