Bridging the communication gap to strengthen public health action
Healthy Reads | San Francisco, USA | 2012
Role
Founder
Goal
Public health practitioners tackle complex and systemic social problems, from challenging anti-vaccination messaging to managing epidemics. The scale of the problems we face demand cross sector competency and communication, yet we work in silos that limit our ability to act as a collective force.
Approach
My response to the cross-sector communication gap was Healthy Reads, an online community for public health professionals to share, rank and discuss the latest health news. To build this out I:
-
Developed brand, content strategy
-
Found a technical partner
-
Tested out interest using a launch page
-
Launched an MVP
-
Built a team of community managers
-
Gathered platform feedback
-
Grew and promoted the online community
Insights to Action
Launching the platform helped validate my hypothesis that there was a need for an online community for public health practitioners: within one month of launch, Healthy Reads became the second largest online community for public health professionals in the US and Canada. Healthy Reads participated in the Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) in Silicon Valley.
