Keywords: Health communication, Audience Engagement, Trust and Transparency, Proactive Messaging
Public Communication in Health and Emergency Awareness
When public safety and health are at stake, effective communication becomes more than an organizational duty, it’s a lifeline to the communities society serves. Across four distinct campaigns, the CDC’s Zombie Apocalypse campaign, the #WhatIDidInstead teen drinking initiative, the FactNotFiction sexual health education platform and Dow’s Corning’s corporate crisis management, society sees a spectrum of public relations approaches in action. Though the subjects vary, they converge on core themes: audience engagement, creative strategy and the high stakes of public trust in moments of urgency.
Organization Response: From Crisis Management to Proactive Prevention
Dow’s Corning’s crisis illustrates how corporate response to health-related emergencies can falter without timely transparency and emotional intelligence. Their reliance on dense scientific defenses in the breast implant controversy overshadowed the need for empathy and public assurance. Although the company has had an ethics policy in place since 1976 that guides decision-making, the public believed that it was ignoring the ethical concerns surrounding the continued use of its breast implants when making business and legal decisions (Case 10-4 Dow Corning and and Breast Implants: Dealing with the Perception of Deception, n.d., p. 261). In contrast, the CDC’s Zombie Apocalypse campaign flipped the script, using an unexpected and playful theme to engage proactively in emergency preparedness, well before disaster struck. To achieve CDC’s objective of raising awareness of emergency preparedness and engaging teens and young adults on the topic, the campaign strategy called for using humorous messages to communicate credible information. By pairing the agency’s traditional preparedness advice with a pop-culture phenomenon, the communicators hoped to spice up the notion of preparedness without changing the underlying how-to information (Kruvand & Silver, 2013, p. 40). In addition, Let’s Talk Public Health (n.d.) write that you might chuckle right now, but you’ll be glad you read this when it happens and who knows, you might even pick up a few tips on how to be ready for a real emergency (Let’s Talk Public Health, n.d.).
Video courtesy of WCPO 9 https://www.youtube.com/@Wcpo9 on YouTube: “Archive: Dow Corning Settlement in Breast Implants Case” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpvehrcRAYw
Similarly, the #WhatIDidInstead campaign and FactNotFiction took proactive approaches, focusing on education rather than reaction. The FactNotFiction website was launched on October 1, 2012, with the goal of giving teens and their parents medically accurate information about sexual and reproductive health. This information includes topics like HIV/STI prevention, teen pregnancy prevention, proper condom use, contraceptives, healthy dating relationships and parent/teen communication regarding sexual and reproductive health (Ragsdale et al., 2015, p. 92). Both initiatives targeted youth with accessible, positive messaging, reframing sensitive topics like teen drinking and sexual health in ways that normalized healthy behaviors rather than stigmatizing them. These cases demonstrate a vital PR principle: in health communication, preventive, audience-centered strategies can build trust and inspire action long before crises emerge.
Audience Engagement: Meeting People Where They Are
Each campaign demonstrates that effective engagement starts with understanding your audience’s realities. The CDC leaned into pop culture to cut through apathy and digital noise, successfully grabbing attention with humor and novelty. #WhatIDidInstead used peer influence and positivity to challenge false social norms about teen drinking. “I don’t really believe this peer pressure is real,” read one of the peer-generated messages while three of the six participants wrote their own messages with the hashtag #WhatIDidInstead (Field-Springer, n.d., p. 163). FactNotFiction broke through social taboos by creating a safe, digital space for young people seeking sexual health information. FactNotFiction.com can display information where Mississippi teens are already participating with ease by using these social media platforms as the website(FactNotFiction.com – the Shorty Awards, n.d.). Dow Corning, however, struggled here. By failing to bridge the gap between technical facts and public fear, they lost the opportunity to shape the narrative early on. In health and emergency communication, success often hinges on meeting people where they are: emotionally, culturally and technologically.
Strategic Adaptation: The Need for Evolution and Measurement
A common thread across these campaigns is the importance of adaptability. The CDC’s campaign gained viral success, but lacked clear benchmarks for behavior change. FactNotFiction and #WhatIDidInstead, however, grounded their strategies in audience research and iterative engagement, showing how adaptable, targeted campaigns can evolve alongside audience needs. Dow Corning’s experience serves as a reminder of what happens without this flexibility. In the face of evolving public concerns, reactive, static communication can deepen mistrust and escalate crises.
Conclusion: Building Trust Before, During and After Health Emergencies
These case studies collectively highlight that effective public relations in health and emergency awareness depends on more than just delivering facts. It requires anticipating public concerns, humanizing messages, leveraging creative channels and continuously adapting to feedback. Whether preventing crises or managing them, organizations must prioritize trust, clarity and empathy to truly connect with their audiences. When it comes to public health, communication can save lives.
References
Case 10-4 Dow Corning and Breast Implants: Dealing with the Perception of Deception (n.d.) 261-268.
FactNotFiction.com – The Shorty Awards. (n.d.). https://shortyawards.com/7th/fact-not-fiction
Field-Springer, K. (n.d.). A Strategic View: #WhatIDidInstead: A Social Media Rather Than Social Norms Approach to Curb Teen Drinking. 162-167.
Kruvand, M., & Silver, M. (2013). Zombies gone viral: How a fictional zombie invasion helped CDC promote emergency preparedness. Case Studies in Strategic Communication, 2, 34-60. http://cssc.uscannenberg.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/v2art3.pdf
Let’s Talk Public Health. (n.d.). CDC’s Zombie Preparedness – a great example of edutainment and integrated marketing communications. Let’s Talk Public Health. https://www.letstalkpublichealth.com/blog/cdc-zombie-preparedness-edutainment
Ragsdale, K., Harper, S. K., Kathuria, S., Bardwell, J. H., Penick, C. B., & Breazeale, M. (2015). Social media to enhance sexual health education for youth: FactNotFiction’s (re)design and launch. Case Studies in Strategic Communication, 4, 88-112. http://cssc.uscannenberg.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/v4art5.pdf