Say it Simply: The Power of Plain Language in Advancing Health with Dr. Katelyn Jetelina
About This Episode
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina has taken her modest public health email for friends and family and fashioned it into a public health powerhouse of a newsletter and a significant force of influence for millions. Yes, that little newsletter, "Your Local Epidemiologist," grew from a personal email list to over 330 million followers seeking clear guidance amid uncertainty during the pandemic.
Dr. Jetelina sits down with Carrie to reflect on how we had to learn to navigate the firehose of pandemic information. She turned that effort toward teaching, translating complex science for diverse audiences through an empathetic and apolitical lens. No, she's not trained in communications. Dr. Jetelina is a professor, and embracing that role free of judgment set the stage for her personal rise to prominence.
As culture continues to evolve, Jetelina argues public health must improve its communications capacity and community engagement. She's doing her part to move the discussion forward; she now tackles more ideologically charged topics like gun violence, though still approaches these issues through her solutions-focused, nonpartisan lens.
Throughout the tumult, Jetelina has stayed anchored by her commitment to equip trusted messengers and meet people where they are. Her trailblazing work shows scientific facts alone don't shape opinions; we must appeal to shared values. She calls us all to reimagine public health as a collective mission vital to our shared future. Our great thanks to Dr. Jetelina for joining Mission Forward this week.
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Speaker 1:
Did you get that? Did you that that?
Speaker 2:
Welcome to Mission Forward.
Carrie Fox:
Hi there and welcome to The Mission Forward Podcast, where each week we bring you a thought-provoking and perspective shifting conversation on the power of communication. I'm, Carrie Fox, your host, and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B corporation. And today I have such a communications force for good joining us. Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, who was in many ways, the voice of reason, who guided the country's public health professionals as they navigated how best to communicate through the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly at moments then there was seemingly no good or clear way to communicate. But Dr. Jetelina, well, she figured out a way to help and in a very big way. The thing is, Dr. Jetelina did not set out to play this role. Dr. Jetelina, as you will hear today, is an epidemiologist, she's an academic, she works at a nonpartisan health policy think tank, and she's a senior scientific consultant to a number of organizations.
But in March 2020, she started a newsletter. At the time, it was actually an email blast to update students, faculty, and staff on the developments of the pandemic and to translate public health science so that people would be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. Well, that email blast turned into a newsletter called Your Local Epidemiologist. You've probably heard about it because it has grown to an international audience of 330 million followers. And for good reason.
So we are going to get into this conversation. We're going to learn about Dr. Jetelina's story and where she sees us going in terms of the future of public health communications.
Dr. Jetelina, thank you for joining us on the Mission Forward podcast.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Carrie Fox:
Pick up the story. Tell us a little bit about this moment in time, why you decided to start this newsletter, and how it really spiraled, probably beyond what you even imagined it would.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Yeah. Oh, goodness. So none of it was really purposeful. Back in March of 2020, even before that, I was watching how this virus was changing and quickly spreading. And a lot of people, particularly in the United States in March of 2020, started to have a ton of questions, including my neighbors, my family, my friends, our faculty, staff, and students. And so I started writing daily updates. I called them, in the beginning, my Daily Data-driven Updates, which basically were a few sentences, a few really ugly graphs on Excel, bringing people along for the ride of what I was seeing in real time, the implications it had for the nation, as well as for individuals on the ground.
Started off, like you said, as an email only to about 30 people. Then after a few days, one of my students came to me and asked if I could start putting it on social media on Facebook so she didn't have to keep copying and pasting the words for her families and friends. So I started a Facebook page and that grew, and grew, and grew. And then I turned it into an email newsletter about a year or two years later.
It has grown beyond my belief. In fact, I can't really think about it too much or I start getting stage fright. I have to continually remind myself to think about how I would talk to my sister and my Mom to not get that fright because it has grown into a large international audience.
And it's been quite a ride. Like you said, I don't consider myself really a scientific communicator. I consider myself a scientist, an epidemiologist, but what I was before the pandemic was a teacher. I was a professor. And so, I think a lot of that shines through my writings of how much I really, truly enjoy getting questions from people, but also answering and meeting people in a place where they are, particularly around public health.
Carrie Fox:
I'm thinking back, Katelyn, to some of those early days of COVID-19, when even the most expert scientists didn't know how to communicate through this time and didn't really understand what was happening, right? It was all unfolding right before our eyes. Did you find, sometimes, that you were trying to figure it out, too? Or, I hear you talk about translating it. Translating it often means you understood it. But sometimes it seems like maybe you didn't you were just really trying to break down what you were hearing.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Yeah, that's right. I think It's really important to first recognize, especially for those outside the public health world, is we're never trained in communication. And I think that really showed throughout the pandemic. We're really good and trained at talking to other scientists. We are not trained on talking to the community, the general public. And that has a whole lot of complex that I've learned traits like opening up a bidirectional relationship, listening, equipping trust in messengers, owning things when you'll get it wrong.
And I think most importantly, and the most challenging thing a lot of leaders, scientific leaders, had during the pandemic is communicating uncertainty, particularly while we are getting this fire hose of information and things seem to be rapidly changing every day. And, yeah, you can be taught that in courses, and I hope that we're taught that in public health, and it's integrated a whole lot more as a core in public health responses. But I think that a lot of it comes from practice, from actually doing it. And that's something that I gained throughout this.
Carrie Fox:
Your words and your work is so approachable, it's, so accessible, right? It's really easy to understand, and it's interesting, because regardless of the sector, whether we're talking about public health or corporate America, I find all the time that some of the most skilled leaders, CEOs, heads of organizations, get lost in the jargon of their words, right? We so easily move into the technical language.
And it's interesting, because you talked about at the top how you thought about how would I say this to my sister or to my neighbor and bringing it back down. We're not born in that natural tendency to speak in jargon. At some point, that becomes how we communicate as professionals. And then we have to almost retrain ourselves to speak in plain language.
Did you ever find as you were getting through and starting your career that you were leaning into this kind of technical speak and you had to break the habit of it? Or has this always been just the way you communicate, you find really simple ways to say it?
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Looking back, I think it is a combination. What I recognized is that knowledge translation is this art form. It's an art form between balancing nuance and balancing understandability, as well as understanding your audience, right? Some audiences that you build will appreciate that technical knowledge, they'll be able to follow you. But my audience was not necessarily other epidemiologists. So I think It's really important that we constantly remind ourselves of who we're talking to, but also to, not only get out of the weeds of technical jargon, but also don't underestimate your audience, too. I think a lot of people throughout the pandemic wanted to learn more. What does an mRNA vaccine do to my body? How can I use an antigen test best before seeing Grandma? And I think they deserve to understand that without getting bogged down in the weeds.
This is something I constantly had to check myself and I still do. I still got emails, for example, last week about a sentence I wrote that people just didn't understand what IgG meant, antibodies. And they shouldn't. But that helped me, again, check myself and try to be better for next time.
Carrie Fox:
And we'll, be right back.
Today's episode is brought to you in part by Common Health Actions Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Training Institute. You might remember the name Common Health Action from season three of this show, which I co-hosted in partnership with the brilliant Natalie Burke, co-founder of Common Health Action. Their EDI Institute was a transformational experience for me and I can't recommend this experience high enough. Common Health Actions EDI Training Institute features curriculum that supports your perspective transformation. It ensures practical application of that knowledge that you're learning through that experience. Ensure they're not just telling you the information, but they're showing you and helping you feel how to use an equity lens to analyze and design policies, programs, and practices, while applying that same approach to your individual decision-making behaviors and actions. So check this out and register for an upcoming course. You can learn more at CommonHealthAction.org/EDI-Training-Institute that's, again CommonHealthAction.org/EDI-Training-Institute.
And now, back to today's show.
You know just a little about me and my love and admiration for Natalie Burke. And you, and Natalie, and I had a conversation not too long ago. And I'm constantly in admiration of folks like you and Natalie Burke who are really challenging the way that your field works and operates, right? You have seen, as I think in many cases Natalie has too, that there are elements of your field of public health that really can be disrupted, they can be changed. And one of the things you've recognized is communications really is something that should be much more center, right? Plain language communications really should be much more important. Have you seen any sort of shift in these last few years that in fact we are moving in that direction or is there still a lot of work to be done?
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Unfortunately, I haven't seen much movement, which incredibly frustrates me because that means to me that, public health as a field doesn't understand yet. Maybe this will change the value scientific communication or translation had throughout the pandemic or even during an emergency.
And not just words, but how we do it, too. How do we engage networks? How do we adapt to this 21st century information ecosystem? How do we continue to put public back in public health? So it's not just communicating, it's not PR, but it's really community engagement and stakeholder engagement.
Like I said, maybe this will change with time, but I think it's important to recognize, especially in public health, that one reason why things weren't communicated well during the pandemic was because a lot of organizations are permeable to external pressures.
For example, the Federal Government is permeable to political pressures. Private industry, a lot of people don't trust private industry because sometimes they may have bias, like for example, pharmaceutical companies.
And so I think a solution to this is also finding a space of where this belongs. Is it in academia? Is it at nonprofits? Is it within training? Is it in the innovation incubators, et cetera? And that's just a conversation that I'm trying to actively participate in and push because of the importance. And I don't want us to lose that momentum.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah. Well, and you're doing a great job of it. It's something that we've also talked about before this importance of asking what if, not taking anything for granted about the way that our field, any field, operates. And instead saying, "Well, what if maybe this is an opportunity for us to change how this field works and operates?"
And certainly, I know that that change takes a long time. But I know you you're spurring a lot of important conversations that are happening.
One of those conversations, I think you started actually this past March, you wrote an essay on what you called the Revisionist Phase of the Pandemic. And the country's very strange relationship with the pandemic. Tell us a little more about that.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot. Because I knew that knew that this was going to be a phase, right? This is a revisionism of looking back in the comfort of our immunity today, and our tools today, of how the pandemic unfolded. And I want us to be at least conscious and wary of how our biases play into how we view 2020, for example, in 2023 and beyond. Because I think that if we normalize 1.2 million deaths, if we normalize or say we were over fearful or over-anxious in March of 2020, we're going to lose a lot of the lessons we learned throughout this emergency and through the community trauma that I don't want us to lose, because we're going to have another emergency, we're going to have another pandemic. And I think that there are a lot of lessons we can learn. And so, I guess the point of me writing the revisionism article was really self-awareness of the biases we have as humans in looking in the past and how we process information going into the future.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah, one of those biases perhaps is how the general public understands or views public health. How they understand what public health is, its role, who's in public health and who's not. What do you think needs to be revised about how the public views and understands public health?
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
So this has been a challenge in public health even before the pandemic, is that a lot of people think of public health as infectious diseases, because that's where it's born and that's where we make headlines. But public health is so much bigger than infectious diseases. It's so much bigger than a pandemic.
For example, public health is seat belts, public health is healthy eating, public health is gun violence, it's reproductive health, it's basically anything that touches on our health, our longevity, and our quality of life.
And so, I've been talking with a lot of leaders the past, actually, couple of weeks about, how do we rebrand public health? How do we, maybe not rebrand, but revise what public health means for the 21st century so people still see that it's relevant and that it's maybe always working in the background, but even if It's working in the background, we still need funding, we still need support, especially when an emergency arises.
Carrie Fox:
It's so interesting as we're recording this in Washington, DC this week, we are in a heat emergency. And so I've been getting daily emails from my daughter's teachers at school, giving updates on how they're planning to change schedules, how they're making sure they're keeping the kids safe and hydrated. And I'm thinking to myself, "That is public health messaging," right?
And so it's this reminder that public health messengers are everywhere. And so that's one of the pieces that I'm feeling like we need to challenge. That it's not all on the public health frontline workers, professionals to be the communicators. It's in many ways that we all have to be those communicators. And is that part of that rebrand, right? That what the future could be is that we all have a stake in communicating about public health?
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Absolutely. I completely agree. That is one huge lesson I learned was the value of trusted messengers and our information ecosystem and diffusion network. That one of the biggest lessons I learned was that the audience of your local epidemiologists, wasn't necessarily Joe on the corner, but they were these trusted messengers. They were pastors, they were educators, they were school boards, they're epidemiologists, they're scientists at NASA, they're, the White House, they're really anyone that was willing to take in this information and then curate it more for their audience of how it's applicable to them.
And there's so much power in that. And that's how we get over vaccine hesitancy. I think the biggest challenge though is maintenance of those networks, is information exchange. How do we do that in times of non-emergency, as well as in times of emergency? How do we support those efforts? And those are huge, lingering questions in public health, especially if we continue to go back through this cycle of panic and neglect with funding.
Carrie Fox:
I'm thinking, as I think back to that number, 330 million followers and readers of your work, what gives me hope about that is there are probably a lot of people who cross political and party lines that are reading your work and there are applying your work. And that's a good thing, because when we're thinking about the state of our nation, the state of our society, that there is a lot of folks who are questioning the science, and questioning the content, and questioning those trusted thought leaders. It feels really important. And this is beyond public health, but really in any sector, to think about how are we communicating in ways that bring everyone along and that diffuse some of that challenge that we feel so deeply in our society today?
How did you work through that? I know you've had some tough conversations along the way and some pushback on your work, too.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Yeah, it's been a wild ride. I think one thing that I will forever be grateful for is being an epidemiologist in Texas during a pandemic. And, at the time, I did not appreciate it. But looking back, it taught me so much about listening. And it also taught me a lot about how we can all see the same data, the same data points, but what influences our opinions and our actions are based on the values we also have. So It's not just based on science, it's also based on morals, and values, and budget, et cetera.
And so one reason I think that I've been able to have a very diverse following is, one, I started in the South, and so that's where that following started. Two, I try so hard to take politics out of it, which is really hard because public health is inherently political, but it doesn't have to be partisan. And I think separating those two things are really important and people appreciate it. Three, I've tried to be as transparent and honest as possible. I've owned up to my mistakes and my own biases along the way. And four, I think it's like you said, is that I particularly find a value in equipping trust in messengers in a lot of places that people have given up on, like the rural south, like a lot of those places where we saw a lot of distress and a lot of pushback. And I see that more as a challenge, rather than a reason to stop engaging with them.
Carrie Fox:
So that practicing deep listening, and empathy, and learning, it seems like you are doing that every day and using the skills that you learned as an academic and as a teacher to put that to work. And so that sounds like a great lesson that anyone listening can continue to practice as we're thinking about how do we close divides? How do we navigate through difficult conversations? That listening first is always a good strategy.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
I think listening first is huge strategy. I think also, we have to remember that words matter. That what you say and how you say it really matters to build new foundations of trust.
There's been a lot of frustration over the past three years, not just in the pandemic, but climate change, and AI, and everything that's changing so quickly, that we have to come from a place of empathy. And especially people that are, for example, hesitant to have vaccines, or believe in conspiracy theories, because if we do not, then people will double down because those are their tribes. And if we want to change minds or change behaviors, we have to send, again, a new foundation of trust, and it's done through what words we use, how we say those words, when to say them. And then again, who says them like trust in messengers.
Carrie Fox:
I want to reinforce for folks who are listening, we're coming to the end of this, that you have really expanded the topics you are talking about. What started singularly as how to translate public health information about COVID, has expanded to many, many public health issues, from gun violence, to mental health. Tell us a little more about the issues that are heavy on your mind, and that you're listening for, and helping to translate these days?
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
I'm picking all the easy topics, like reproductive health and gun violence, but I see them all as very much like I saw with COVID, that they are politically decisive, but there is a need for translating the data so people understand what the actual numbers are and then people are influenced by their values.
And I think once we can find that foundation of something we can agree on, we can become more prepared to navigate our lives, as well as navigate population-level responses.
Selfishly, what I'm trying to do with my newsletter is show people, rather than tell them, that public health goes beyond, again, infectious diseases in a pandemic. And if I have garnered the attention right now, I feel as a responsibility as a public health leader to show that, as well. So maybe people can think when their schools are getting closed because of heat that, yeah, this is a public health challenge and we really need to support public health workers around the United States.
Carrie Fox:
So there's two things I want to lift back up about that. One, picking up on the words you just said, support public health workers across the United States. That they need the support, they need the funding to do their job well, they need the capacity to do their job well. And in some cases, they need the skills-building to do their job well, to close those gaps.
The other side of that is, we are in many ways, all public health professionals. So if you are listening right now and you are the executive of an organization, if you lead human resources for your organization, if you're the head of a nonprofit for the organization, if you lead volunteers for an organization, if you're a principal, there are public health messages that you are likely communicating. And it's how you communicate those that matter. And so I'm going to reinforce to visit Dr. Katelyn Jetelina's blog, subscribe to that blog, learn from her, follow her, and see how you, too can support our closing the gap of understanding how public health matters to everyone.
Katelyn, I want to give you the last word here. What's on your mind that's giving you hope or that you want to drive people to action today as we wrap up?
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
I think it's exactly like you said, don't underestimate the power you have to communicate good evidence-based public health, as well as your role in this information diffusion network that we all touch in our everyday lives. And so, I hope that you can feel empowered. I hope that you can help the mission of public health and for us to all live long, healthy lives.
Carrie Fox:
Well, I appreciate so much the work that you've been doing the last few years. I know that It's been a wild ride that you have been on. And how many people you have directly influenced and supported through some very difficult days. So thank you, Dr. Katelyn Jetelina. Your Local Epidemiologist is the name of the blog. And look forward to staying in touch and following your work.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina:
Thank you so much, Carrie.
Carrie Fox:
And that brings us to the end of this episode of Mission Forward. Thanks for tuning in today. If you are stewing on what we discussed here today, or if you heard something that's going to stick with you, drop me a line at Carrie@Mission.Partners and let me know what's got you thinking.
And if you have thoughts for where we should go in future shows, I would love to hear that, too.
Mission Forward is produced with the support of Sadie Lockhart in association with the True Story Team. Engineering by Pete Wright. If your podcast app allows for ratings and reviews, I hope you'll consider doing just that for this show. But the best thing you can do to support vision forward is simply to share the show with a friend or colleague. Thanks for your support and we'll see you next time.
