Health communication is for life, not just for a global pandemic

By Fia Long

In these unprecedented times, we cannot examine the importance of health communications without addressing the pandemic-sized elephant in the room. Never before has health communication played such a vital role in everyday life. From campaigns around prevention strategies and vaccine rollouts, to the nightly knell on the Nine O’Clock News, communications around Covid have saturated every aspect of our lives for almost 18 months.

The coronavirus pandemic has created great uncertainty, elevated stress and anxiety, thrown us all into economic uncertainty, and most egregiously (from the perspective of this author, anyway) shone a spotlight on some major issues surrounding healthcare communications and highlighted why it is so important for healthcare and communications professionals alike to understand its value.

A nuanced strand of the public relations profession, health communication requires an ability to tactfully translate and disseminate information to support and educate the public, while often simultaneously engaging in reputation, issue or crisis management. The competent use of the practise is imperative in a wide-range of varying scenarios, from large scale public health campaigns to the intimate relationship between doctor and patient.

Despite the obvious salience of health communication, the practice is routinely relegated to unilluminating governmental press releases, reactive media statements and forgettable public safety campaigns. Furthermore, misinformation, or simply a lack of communication, often permeates the healthcare arena.

However, with the onslaught of the pandemic, the traditional, often lacklustre, communications playbook was thrown out, as leaders and professionals alike scrambled to gain the trust of their target audiences. Never before had those in the public eye, in particular global leaders, been placed under such intense scrutiny by a skeptical public to practise proficient health comms, while their audiences simultaneously relished in the opportunity to judge the care, authenticity, and purpose of every utterance.

Almost since the onset, Ireland’s reaction to the pandemic has been plagued (no pun intended) with allegations of mixed messages and a general lack of clarity. Government communications blunders abounded; no one ever truly understood what level of restriction we were supposed to be existing in or why the middle aisle in Lidl was such a Covid hot-spot. Both the public and media hounded every governmental misstep, from an uninspiring vaccine rollout and a break in restrictions over Christmas that saw cases skyrocket.

And Covid-19 is far from the first healthcare crisis in Ireland to fail on the communication front. The CervicalCheck controversy dominated much of the pre-pandemic healthcare spaces and the tragic consequences of the breakdown of communication in healthcare were laid bare for all to see.

But we are not doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

The good news is that the fundamental tools of effective communication are just as effective in the healthcare sphere. As in all good comms, it is imperative to define and point to long-term goals, listen to and understand your stakeholders, and create openings for dialogue. Be proactive, open, honest and informative.

As The Lancet identified early into the pandemic, providing clear, straightforward information is an incredibly simple, but incredibly effective, start to healthcare messaging. This can be done by earning the respect, understanding or good will of their publics.

For example, to combat the high levels of misinformation, stress and anxiety circulating during the early days of the pandemic, a number of Irish hospitals identified strong, on-the-ground voices who could break through the confusion and panic to speak directly to the public and target audiences. Not only did this amplify the public health message with a level of authority and authenticity, it gave the public a voice and a face to look to for guidance and reassurance.

The WHO states that “that there are fewer errors and better treatment outcomes when there is good communication between patients and their health-care providers, and when patients are fully informed and educated about their treatment and medication.” Effective healthcare communications starts from the bottom up and this sentiment rings as valid whether in the context of global campaigns or in a local GP’s surgery.

The pandemic has provided a solid framework for what works or doesn’t work within health comms, and the difficult lessons learned will only serve to enhance our understanding of the practice. As we anticipate a return to normality, one can only hope that the importance of healthcare communications has been understood by public and private entities alike and we see a reinvigorated use of effective, transparent and informative communications employed by all.