Communication and Medicine—Lessons Learnt at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Author: Gabriela Azevedo Sansoni
Keywords: public speaking, advocacy
Turn on the TV and switch to the news channel. Any day, anytime, anywhere in the world. Chances are there is either a pandemic, a medical emergency of the president or a celebrity, a generic scandal in hospital administration, or an ongoing vaccination campaign debate being broadcasted.
As a mere student, I am quite safe when it comes to giving expert opinions on TV - it would never happen to me in my current situation. As a curious person, however, I wondered with much interest on how it would feel to carry such privilege and responsibility, the one of being a public health communicator. I confess I did not have to wonder for that long, and no, I was not invited to give an interview.
I was, instead, awarded a much more exciting opportunity. It did involve 24 hours of Masters level coursework spread in only 9 days, but it was worth it. The experience I mean was possible thanks to a scholarship for the 17th Annual Johns Hopkins Fall Institute in Health Policy and Management and it was a wonderful course titled “Effective Presentations and News Media Interviews”.
During the course, we had two main simulation exercises, both which consisted of turning on the camera and microphone. And also smiling and speaking in a calm, clear manner, avoiding hand gestures and spinning on your desk chair, looking trustworthy, serious and yet amicable.
One of them was called a FlashTalk, or elevator pitch. You had to choose a topic that made sense to you, something that you did for work or school. At the time I chose to discuss my research internship about cardiopulmonary exercise test on Fontan circulation patients, we had a cohort of adults and children with and without Fontan circulation to study. Our test protocol was on an ergometric bike with increasing resistance …and I could carry on for hours. Truth is it is always going to be easier to talk about a topic you speak about frequently.
The second video was a live interview simulation. It lasted for seven minutes and had all the preparation a real interview would have. It was definitely interesting to try it out and I would say the simulation was very realistic, giving me the chills and anxiety related to being live on TV. I have made a fair amount of mistakes when it comes to body language; chair spinning, looking down and to the sides, not looking directly at the camera and so on.
Watching yourself on a recording can be a highly painful situation. It reminds you of how nonverbal cues are as important as verbal messaging. However, as we learned in class, doing good media interviews is just like any other skill – it can be learned. And as long as you remember the main messaging you’re trying to get across – you can (try to) bypass some of the trickier questions by using tools like boomerangs and bridges (image rebouncing a question, or connecting a random answer to the main message you have to delivery).
I want to carry as much as possible from this course throughout my career. I have had a great learning time with this short and intense experience. Being a public health communicator is more than being a good communicator, or simply having an important, life-saving message to pass on. It is a healthy mix of both. It is having a duty, the duty of informing different stakeholders about relevant health related topics and official information, guidelines, and protocols to be followed. Sometimes they will be simple precaution measures, other law-bound curfews, outwear (say masks, for example) and lockdowns. The course experience was paramount for me getting to these conclusions and making me sure of what the real meaning of being an effective public health communicator is.
About the author: Gabriela Azevedo Sansoni is a 4th year student at the International Medical School University of Milan and research assistant at the UMC Utrecht for over one year. She coordinates different projects with her peers that aim to bring surgery closer to medical students, she is president and founder of the Association of Women Surgeons University of Milan Chapter (instagram: @ausunim) and InciSioN Italy.
