Foundational Skills for Communicating About Health (Coursera)

Learners will develop the skills to: analyze and tailor a communication effort for different audiences, develop clear messages, create logical and compelling stories, understand and apply important considerations with language as well as nonverbal communication.

This course is valuable and appropriate for both beginning and experienced health professionals who need to communicate effectively with other professionals, patients, policymakers, or the broader public.. Content is relevant to public health professionals, clinicians of all types (medical, nursing, dentists, social work, etc.), health advocates, and scientists and researchers in any health domain..

What You Will Learn

- Define and collect important information about a target audience in order to make appropriate decisions about the communication effort

- Select an audience-appropriate communications goal

- Craft a clear, concise core message for a communication effort

- Deploy at least two different types of narrative structures to support communications about health topics

Syllabus

Week 1

In Week 1, we will consider how knowing your audience and your specific goals are the critical first steps to designing effective communications.

Week 2

In Week 2, we will focus on developing clear takeaway messages so that communications can achieve their objectives.

Week 3

This week, we focus on using plain language to avoid jargon, and continue to practice finding a clear central message.

Week 4

In Week 4, we will learn how to use narrative forms to tell the story of science and how to think about the larger macro-structures of messages, especially when your message is designed to advocate for your central point.

Week 5

In Week 5, we will learn oral presentation skills, create a final written assignment summarizing a scientific article for a different audience, and (optionally) create a short video presentation for a public audience.