Communicating Through a Pandemic: A Chronicle of Experienes, Lessons Learned, and a Vision for the Future

Outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics are nothing new. Over the last several decades, we have been through numerous--Zika, Ebola, H1N1. The COVID‐19 pandemic, however, has challenged us like never before. During this time, we have struggled to work remotely, to balance work and children’s school schedules, and to manage finances in the face of lost or furloughed jobs. We have worried about our loved ones getting sick and being able to support themselves, and we have faced the loneliness that comes with social distancing.

It has affected us individually and globally--but we have not all experienced this pandemic in exactly the same way. Some communities have been hit harder in terms of sickness and death rates from COVID‐19. Many have felt the economic pressures of the pandemic more acutely. Still others have struggled disproportionately with the mental health impacts. Context has mattered in this pandemic.

There is one common thread that runs through everything we have experienced though: the role that communication has played in managing this pandemic. Whether we are talking about communication about the virus and mitigation strategies, communication between friends and family, the urgent crisis resulting in mis- and dis-information, our complex and diffuse media environment, or new workplace communication strategies, communication has been front and center in this pandemic.

The role of communication has been integral to the success and failure of our ability to respond and adapt to and begin to recover from this pandemic--as individuals, collectively as communities, and as countries. As a result, issues such as preparedness, misinformation, literacy and comprehension of virus and vaccine science, health equity and mental health have all gained increased awareness during this time.

This book unpacks the many and varied roles that communication has played over the course of this pandemic, in order to help public health professionals, marketers and health communicators, and policymakers alike to understand what we have been through, what has worked well, and what we have struggled with. It will help us learn from our experiences, so we communicate through pandemics more successfully in the future.

Dr. Amelia Burke-Garcia is a seasoned and award-winning health communications professional with nearly twenty years of experience in health communication program planning, implementation, and evaluation, with specific expertise in developing and evaluating digital health communications campaigns and intervention studies.

Currently, Dr. Burke-Garcia is a program area director in the Public Health Department at NORC at the University of Chicago where she directs the award-winning How Right Now/Que Hacer Ahora campaign, which is aimed at increasing people’s ability to cope and be resilient amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. In this role, she oversees a portfolio of work that includes rapid formative research to inform the development of a set of new messages and materials tailored to the needs of four priority audiences: people ages 65+ and their caregivers, people living with pre-existing mental and physical health conditions, people experiencing violence, and people experiencing economic distress.

Earlier roles have included acting as director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Influenza Vaccination campaign and as project director for CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities’ (NCBDDD) health communication support contract. She has also co-led a social media and breast cancer study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was co-Principal Investigator on a study that aimed to understand messages and motivations of vaccine hesitant or refusing social media influencers (which was published in Vaccine in 2020).

Over the course of her career, Dr. Burke-Garcia has spearheaded some of the most innovative communication programs and studies on a variety of health topics. Examples include leveraging MeetUp groups and the Waze mobile application to move people to action around flu vaccination and HIV testing, respectively.

Her book, Influencing Health: A Comprehensive Guide to Working with Online Influencers, was released in 2019 by Routledge Press. She is a founding member of the Society for Health Communication and is a member of the American College of Preventative Medicine’s social media committee, the editorial board of Social Marketing Quarterly, the board of ShiftCon, a health and wellness online influencer network, and the scientific committee for BigSurv20, the leading conference on big data and survey science. She recently gave the keynote address at Health Action Alliance’s virtual briefing on employee mental health and has been named to VeryWellHealth.com’s list of 10 Modern Female Innovators Shaking Up Health Care. She was also named as Diverse Health Hub’s Woman of the Week.

She holds a PhD in Communication from George Mason University, a Master’s degree in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University, and a joint honours Bachelor’s degree in International Development Studies and Humanistic Studies from McGill University.