Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Public Health Impact, Trust and Communications

Course Description

To “do” public health well, we must generate public impact. But the field of public health now faces a historic crisis of mistrust that stymies our ability to generate impact across many of our fields – from epidemiology and addictions to occupational health and policy. In this course, students will study the dynamics currently undermining public trust in public health and then be introduced to evidence-based models they can apply to generate impact in low trust environments across public health fields. These include: community engagement models, journalism models, political problem-solving models, and crisis management models.

This course is interactive and highly applied; it is designed for graduate students in all fields of public health and health policy, across DLSPH programs, and for those preparing to work in either internal or public-facing roles.

Course Objectives

Students completing this course will be able to:

• Understand the current sources and drivers of mistrust in public health and in science;
• Formulate a basic strategy for community engagement in low-trust environments;
• Use basic journalism disciplines to formulate a non-polarized public agenda;
• Anticipate and query political problems that could block healthy public policy;
• Understand how crises can be an opportunity to generate trust.

Methods of Assessment

Participation	20%
Assignment 1: Trust Audit	30%
Assignment 2: Trust Strategies	30%
Assignment 3: Crisis Simulation – Trust Reflection	20%