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.
What You’ll Learn
- Present community data using a community-centered approach
- Analyze how historical public health and health communication events and approaches have led to mistrust/distrust by communities
- Recognize the importance of centering communities in public health communications activities
- Describe communities relevant to your public health communications work
- Discuss the role of power in public health-community relationships and how to work to redistribute power in public health communications efforts
- Discuss aspects, considerations, and activities for building trust and relationships with community partners
- Identify the place on the “spectrum” of Community Engagement to Ownership of examples and your own activities
- Develop a community engagement strategy
- Shift from a deficit- to an asset-based approach when referring to communities and community members
- Design health communication processes that incorporate meaningful community engagement
Meet the Expert
Ameena Batada, DrPH (she/her) 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.
What You Can Expect
This course is self-paced and will take roughly two hours to complete. The interactive course components include:
- Pre- and post-course surveys. Completion of these two surveys is required. Your responses will help us better understand our audience and measure the impact of the course.
- Content videos. There are 9 videos with a total of about 1.5 hours of content to watch.
- Reflection exercises. After each video, take a moment to reflect on what you just heard and how you might apply it to your work.
- Knowledge checks. Most modules will have a short knowledge check after watching the related video to review concepts.
- Post-module surveys. At the end of each module, there will be an opportunity to provide feedback to help us improve the content and experience of the course.
To receive a digital certificate of completion, you will need to watch all the module videos, submit your reflection question responses, and score at least 75% on each knowledge check.
Let’s Get Started
To begin the course, click on the “pre-course survey” in the Course Content table below. If you have not yet registered for the course, click the “Take this Course” button located in the upper right corner, and then complete the pre-course survey.
Use the Course Content table below to track your progress and guide your next steps. The course content should be viewed and completed in the order shown. Click “Expand” to see the components of a module. When a course component (e.g., survey, module, etc.) is completed, the icon next to it will turn green.
At the start of each module, there will be a Module Content table to help you track your progress within that particular module. You can click “Back to Course” to come back to this page.