16. Vaccine Messaging: How Comms Professionals Can Help Save the World from Covid

With Covid-19 vaccination efforts finally getting underway, communicating properly about this process is critical to saving lives and re-opening the economy. That responsibility extends beyond the traditional bounds of public health communication, according to public health experts, and touches nearly every strategic communicator in the country--and indeed every American citizen. In this episode, we welcome back two past guests to the show. Bill Pierce was formerly a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush Administration. Today he’s a crisis communications consultant at APCO Worldwide and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University. And Dr. Maria Sundaram is an epidemiologist and post-doctoral fellow at IC/ES, the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto, and a global authority on Covid-19. These world-class public health communicators are in agreement that how we all communicate about the vaccination process going forward will play a major part in how many lives are saved. We’ll also explore what needs to happen from a StratComm standpoint, the best ways to deal with all the misinformation about vaccines, what went wrong in the last year, and why this could be a turning point in the war on Covid. Because if we do it right this time, communicators could still help save the world.  (Pictured in this week's podcast art: Dusty's hero, his wife, getting her vaccination as a frontline M.D.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices