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Expand and elevate your public health communications skills

The Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC) Academy is a free training hub to support public health communicators around the country. The Academy equips public health professionals with the confidence and competence to communicate effectively with their communities.

What you can expect from the PHCC Academy

  • Learn from experts in the field through dynamic self-paced modules and synchronous opportunities
  • Build your knowledge and skills in communications best practices
  • Meet and connect with other public health communicators
  • Receive a digital certificate of completion
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Take PHCC Academy’s first course: Strengthening Public Health Communications through Community Engagement

This free training is roughly two hours and designed to provide a foundation for understanding and applying principles of community engagement to public health communications work.

  • Learning Introduction  
  • Module 1: Historic, Structural and System Factors Leading to Inequities and the Importance of Centering Communities 
  • Module 2: What is Community Engagement? 
  • Module 3: Meaningful Community Engagement in Health Communication 
  • Module 4: Communicating Data about, in, and with Communities 

Meet the Expert: Dr. Ameena Batada

Ameena Batada, DrPH (she/her) is our subject matter expert for this first cohort on community engagement. Dr. Batada has over 20 years of experience in communications and public health both in the US and internationally. Dr. Batada has spent her career working with partners to improve health and advance health equity through communications and research, from individual to national-level efforts. Currently, Dr. Batada teaches health communication and community health transformation courses at UNC Asheville and partners with organizations, community members, and public health departments on community-driven efforts to advance policy change and health equity. She was the co-director of the UNC Asheville-UNC Gillings Master of Public Health program until 2024. For the last 13 years she has lived and engaged primarily with local and regional partners in Western North Carolina.

Frequently Asked Questions

As an extension of the Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC), the PHCC Academy is designed to expand and elevate the communications skills of public health practitioners across the country. Through dynamic and engaging content, the Academy seeks to fill identified skill gaps in the field and ensure the public health communications workforce has opportunities to learn from experts and one another while building their knowledge and skill in communications best practices.

Public health communications has long suffered from underinvestment and understaffing, and those that do fill these important roles report a lack of training and support. By equipping these individuals with the confidence and competence to adopt communications best practices and communicate effectively with their communities, the Academy aims to strengthen public health communications ecosystems and improve trust in public health.  

The PHCC Academy offers virtual asynchronous and synchronous content.  

Asynchronous content (self-paced): 

Roughly 2-hours of self-paced content hosted in an online learning management system housed on our PHCC website. Each video as part of the training includes a video of a subject matter expert (SME) facilitator delivering content verbally, as well as visual content such as graphics, text overlays, knowledge checks, and animations. 

Synchronous content (live): 

Following the release of the asynchronous content, the PHCC Academy will also offer the opportunity to participate in a synchronous virtual cohort. These synchronous learning opportunities will build on the asynchronous content already released and offer participants an opportunity to build their skills with a subject matter expert, learn from one another, and apply their learnings to a challenge they are facing in their health department. It is estimated to take up to six hours to complete this training. 

All virtual offerings of the PHCC Academy are free. Acceptance into a virtual synchronous cohort is selective, in an effort to keep cohorts small and supportive, but participation is free to those who are selected. 

Based on feedback from the PHCC community, the Academy is launching its first course on Strengthening Public Health Communications through Community Engagement. This first course will touch upon:  

  • Learning Introduction  
  • Module 1: Historic, Structural and System Factors Leading to Inequities and the Importance of Centering Communities 
  • Module 2: What is Community Engagement? 
  • Module 3: Meaningful Community Engagement in Health Communication 
  • Module 4: Communicating Data about, in, and with Communities 

Community engagement is vital for public health communicators for building trust and credibility, understanding community needs, promoting a sense of ownership and participation in healthy initiatives, and fostering collaboration.

While we are not issuing continuing education credits for this first training, this is something we are considering for future opportunities. We will be issuing digital certificates for participants to post on their LinkedIn accounts.