It’s (not) rocket science: public health communication experience as expressed by participants to an international workshop

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONThe past few years have faced unprecedented communication problems in healthcare as public health professionals were insufficiently prepared to spread trustworthy information during a global pandemic. We held a workshop during the 17th World Public Health Conference 2023, aiming at creating a peer-to-peer collaboration platform to exchange research findings about public health communication with colleagues worldwide. This report aims to summarize the survey results at the workshop which was entitled "It's (not) rocket science! A quick guide to successful scientific communication in Public Health" held on the first day of the conference, attracting over 150 attendees. METHODS After the workshop, we invited participants to complete a 16-question multiple-choice survey via Google Forms to gather their opinions and experiences in public health communication. RESULTS We collected 48 responses: most of them (71%) were from medical residents in public health. In all, 31% of respondents reported to have undergone specialized