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
By joining, you will have access to all courses along with future courses that the Academy will publish.
- 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
Courses Available
Each training is free of cost, asynchronous, and is approximately two hours long. The trainings are led by experts in the field and include a variety of videos, readings, and written exercises.
Live Training Opportunities
Apply Now: Strengthening Public Health Communications through Community Engagement Synchronous Sessions
Application open through February 12, 2025.
I loved how the asynchronous part gave you the background and we were able to interact in the synchronous portion. It was a great layout.
Community Engagement 2024 Participant
Join a cohort of public health professionals in a synchronous training of Strengthening Public Health Communications through Community Engagement designed to build on the asynchronous content and enhance your ability to engage effectively with communities and build strong, trusting relationships. Over the course of three interactive sessions, you will gain practical skills and strategies to support your work in health communications and community engagement.
- Session I: Building Trust & Relationships
- Session II: Facilitating Community Processes
- Session III: Addressing Challenges in Community Engagement
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.
The Academy plans to deliver two topics each year based on the needs and requests of users like you. Let us know what topics you’d like to see in the future by providing feedback after your course.
While we are not issuing continuing education credits for this first training, this is something we are considering for future opportunities. Participants will receive digital certificates upon course completion to post on their LinkedIn accounts.