Foundational Capabilities Resource Hub

The goal of this social media calendar is to provide our regional health departments with a 12 month social media "road-map" that makes it easy communicate important, relevant, and timely informaiton to residents. One of the focal points to keep in mind while reviewing and using this tool is that all posts should promote respective organizational services or events.

This resource discusses how effective public health communication requires more than just careful language, but includes a fundamental shift in design and delivery to address health inequities. The framework emphasizes recognizing diversity as a driver for better communication, empowering marginalized groups in decision-making, and explicitly naming systemic oppression as a root cause of health issues.

This resource is an abbreviated version of the misinformation guide developed by the Public Health Communications Collaborative, released in 2024 in partnership with the Infodemiology Training Program. It is intended to help public health communicators respond quickly yet effectively to false narratives.

Article from a Q& A, - " early engagement, hosting site visits, crafting tailored messages with specific asks, and being reciprocal are key elements to establishing effective relationships with legislator"

Advocacy toolkit provided by the Association of Public Health Nurses

This database includes resources that supports, equips, and advocates for state and territorial health officials in their work of advancing the public’s health and well-being by providing capacity building and technical assistance in a variety of areas.

In partnership with Disability Policy Consortium, this guide supports public health communicators in crafting accessible writing, visuals, audio, and videos. Use this guide to develop accessible and inclusive social media content that connects with all members of your audience.

This rescource includes tools to identify, challenge, and transform dominant public narratives that perpetuate health inequities. Through hands-on activities and critical analysis, and recognizing how these powerful, often invisible, stories shape our understanding of social justice and health, ultimately enabling you to advance a more equitable public health practice.

Advocacy tips from the Association of Academic Physiatrist

The policy and advocacy page of the American Public Health Association's website

The Alliance for the Public's Health brings partners together to protect and strengthen the conditions that help communities thrive. It is a multi-sector coalition of networks working to advance public health and equity through strategic communications, advocacy and partnerships. The Alliance creates space for those partners to connect, align their efforts and move forward together.

The Alliance for the Public's Health brings partners together to protect and strengthen the conditions that help communities thrive. It is a multi-sector coalition of networks working to advance public health and equity through strategic communications, advocacy and partnerships. The Alliance creates space for those partners to connect, align their efforts and move forward together.

This downloadable PowerPoint presentation, led by Sandy Hilfiker and Jaime Dawson of Communicate Health, features real-world case studies demonstrating how to integrate inclusive communication principles into health materials, digital products, and campaigns.

This resource helps ensure your website is accessible and easy to navigate for older adults. This rescource contains some tips and best practices that don’t require an advanced web design background.

Explore best practices and resources to foster the expansion and sustainability of evidence-based health promotion programs. Resources include marketing and recruitment, strategic partnerships, toolkits, and more.

Use this database to search for specific bills in the North Carolina General Assembly

This guide offers suggestions and principles that support written and digital content development that is inclusive and equity-informed in public health messaging. Inclusive language is essential for creating safer environments for employees and all community members we engage with.

This resource outlines the urgent need to challenge deeply embedded narratives that perpetuate racism and inequality. It stems from a collective effort of diverse organizations seeking to advance popular narratives that promote racial justice and health equity, and expand health and well-being as a human right and inclusive public good for all.

Document on how to build relationships with elected officials created by NACNS

Trust is the keystone of successful public health messages. To center trust in your communications, consider the insights and tips in this resource. It can help you reevaluate and refine your communications production approach from planning to execution to evaluation for continuous improvement.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Forum.

Most CDC money are grants that go out directly to help communities through health departments, universities, and nonprofits. Use this page to understand how the proposed budget cuts and reorganizations will affect funding to your state and local community.

Carolina Public Health is the award-winning magazine of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. It contains features about the vital public health research, innovation and leadership produced by faculty, students and alumni of the Gillings School.

A research-based tool to help you develop and assess public communication materials. The Index has 4 introductory questions and 20 scored items drawn from scientific literature in communication and related disciplines. The items represent the most important characteristics that enhance and aid people’s understanding of information.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Skill-Building Seminar series.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Skill-Building Seminar series.

In this session, we begin to consider, learn about, and discuss ways to assess and communicate about public health’s impact across sectors and in the news and additional media. We’ll weave in asset-based framing and data visualization to share compelling stories.

This toolkit provides research-tested messaging strategies and practical guidance to effectively explain public health initiatives and their benefits to communities. The resource aims to bridge the communication gap, build public trust, and make the vital role of public health tangible and relatable.

Use this resource to help you engage in effective communication about mental health, reduce stigma, and increase the likelihood that community members receive the help they need.

Communicators need reliable channels for reaching decision-makers, disseminating messages and distributing materials. This article focuses on identifying and utilizing effective communication channels to ensure messages are accessible to diverse audiences.

The use of these guiding principles will help communicators develop assets that build trust, relationships, and understanding with priority communities.

In this session, we aim to present the participants with multiple ways to continue involvement in the network of health communicators in North Carolina. We’ll brainstorm how this new knowledge can be transformed into daily habits and highlight success stories in health communications from across NC.

In this session, we delve into how we use place- and evidence-based information to create health messaging, including working with aspects of health literacy and communities.

In this session, we broaden our scope to consider, learn about, and discuss ways to assess and communicate about public health’s impact across sectors and in the news and additional media. We’ll weave in asset-based framing and data visualization to share compelling stories.

This guide provides a foundational framework for local health department staff to develop, implement, and evaluate public health communication plans. It emphasizes integrating health equity, social justice, accessibility, and health literacy into communication efforts, offering practical questions and considerations. The resource also supports local health departments in meeting Public Health Accreditation Board standards.

The Layers of Strategy is a resource developed by Berkeley Media Studies Group that outlines this approach to help guide your planning. Learn more about Layers of Strategy below and in our free, two-hour course. This virtual course is part of the PHCC Academy, an initiative of the Public Health Communications Collaborative that aims to equip public health professionals with the confidence and competence to communicate effectively with their communities.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Skill-Building Seminar series.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Skill-Building Seminar series.

The Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC) Academy is a free training hub to support public health communicators around the country. The Academy equips public health professionals with the confidence and competence to communicate effectively with their communities.

A health education resource database with access to easy-to-understand health education videos on numerous topics, including community health, health worker trainings, childhood development, common health conditions, trauma-informed interviewing, and more.

The Diversity Style Guide is a resource to help journalists and other media professionals cover a complex, multicultural world with accuracy, authority and sensitivity. The guide contains more than 700 terms related to race/ethnicity, disability, immigration, sexuality and gender identity, drugs and alcohol, and geography.

This guide aims to help data professionals integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into their work. It encourages intentional consideration of how data sources and communication can impact people and communities.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Skill-Building Seminar series.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Skill-Building Seminar series.

In this session, we will discuss planning for campaigns and materials, with a focus on social media approaches and metrics. The founder of Arclet, a North Carolina-based all-in-one platform for evidence-backed health communication, will orient us, and we’ll discuss considerations when communicating about critical contemporary topics from mental health and the environment.

In this session, we will welcome you to the 5-part short course. You will meet health communicators from around the state and will learn more about and discuss who health communicators are, roles, and how to communicate about the value of health communication. We also will discuss resource challenges and how to - at least partially - address them in the near and long term.

In this session, we will discuss planning for campaigns and materials, with a focus on social media approaches and metrics. The founder of Arclet, a North Carolina-based all-in-one platform for evidence-backed health communication, will orient us, and we’ll discuss considerations when communicating about critical contemporary topics from mental health and the environment.

Podcast playable on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on the WNC Health Policy Initiative website.

This guide, available in English and Spanish, helps to evaluate the accuracy and credibility in social media posts and helps to assess the trustworthiness of the content of social media feeds.

This tool allows you to type-in or search public health jargon or plain language words and find alternatives and example sentences. This tool offers expert recommendations from CDC’s Health Literacy Council and other agency communicators on how to reduce jargon and replace problematic terms in your materials in order to improve readers' understanding.

Evidence-based resources are published reviews of intervention evaluations and studies to improve health. Find resources sorted by health conditions, health behaviors, population groups, systems, and social determinants of health.

A resource database with guides and toolkits to help build effective community health. By learning from programs that are known to be effective, you can make the best use of limited funding and resources. Toolkits are developed based on a review of rural programs and initiatives and an extensive literature review, to identify evidence-based and promising models.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Forum.

This tool is meant to guide racial equity practices in the creation and assessment of sustainability and renewable energy policies and programs. It offers a framework and systematic process to build cultures of accountability and work towards racial equity outcomes in decision-making. Lastly, it provides a tangible pathway for an ecosystem2 approach to operationalizing collective racial equity values.

This Harvard publication discusses how researchers lead experiments in 84 countries to test whether public health messages stressing positive benefits of protective behavior work better than those that warn of risks.

This resources provides guidance on creating effective communication strategies through understanding target audiences, communication avenues, and developing community profiles. It also provides a table of communication channels, detailing their suitability for different messages and audiences to ensure effective reach and engagement.

This resources provides guidance on creating effective communication strategies through understanding target audiences, communication avenues, and developing community profiles. It also provides a table of communication channels, detailing their suitability for different messages and audiences to ensure effective reach and engagement.

This document lists frequently used terms in public health materials and their common, everyday alternatives in plain language sentences.

Guide to Effectively Educating State and Policy Makers from the Society for Public Health Education

This resource aims to help linguists proactively use inclusive language, acknowledging that unintentional stereotyping can marginalize and misrepresent. Ultimately, these guidelines encourage practices that promote diversity, respect, and equal opportunities in all forms of communication.

This resource highlights the unique challenges faced by the LGBTQ community residing in the South. Based on a survey of 4,146 individuals, it details the escalating discriminatory legislation targeting LGBTQ individuals, particularly youth, impacting their access to vital resources and contributing to heightened mental health struggles. The report underscores the importance of inclusive language in addressing the compounding stressors experienced by LGBTQ Southerners.

This article introduces the CDC's Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication, a 2021 web-based resource designed to enhance public health communication. It helps practitioners and their partners consider social inequities and diversity, encouraging them to think more inclusively about the people they serve and adapt to the unique contexts of each community.

This article outlines how principles can help public health practitioners communicate more inclusively, considering social inequities and diverse community contexts. The aim is to foster respectful and effective communication that promotes health equity by encouraging a shared understanding and collaborative approach with the communities served.

Call to Action Monthly Newsletter by Harvard Center for Health Communications provides practical tips, events, and resources for building strong health communication skills.

In this session, we delve into how we use place- and evidence-based information to create health messaging, including working with aspects of health literacy and communities. We also discuss ways to counter public health mis- and dis-information.

In this session, we broaden our scope to consider, learn about, and discuss ways to assess and communicate about public health’s impact across sectors and in the news and additional media. We’ll weave in asset-based framing and data visualization to share compelling stories.

Find trainings and tools in health literacy, plain language, public health risk communications, and more. Including online health literacy courses for health professionals, educating public health professionals about key challenges in the communication landscape, and the fundamentals of communicating health risks.

This video series explores historical trauma experienced across generations due to events like genocide, slavery, and forced relocation. It explores how these traumas manifest as higher rates of mental/physical illness and substance abuse in affected communities, emphasizing that historical trauma is an ongoing issue. The series discusses how reconnecting with cultural practices, processing grief, and creating new narratives can foster healing and resilience within these communities.

Article with step by step instructions on how to build relationships with members of congress.

To improve community health outcomes, public health professionals must collaborate with community anchors from other sectors. In this guide, find best communication practices for developing cross-sector partnerships in your community, informed by Public Health Reaching Across Sectors (PHRASES), a partnership of de Beaumont Foundation and The Aspen Institute.

"I'm just a billll, yes I'm only a billl"

In this session, we will welcome you to the 4-part short course. You will meet health communicators from around the state and will learn more about and discuss who health communicators are, roles, and how to communicate about the value of health communication. We also will discuss resource challenges and how to - at least partially - address them in the near and long term.

This report seeks to explore the reasons cancer prevention messaging has often not resonated with its intended audience nor had the effect it was seeking. Uncovering what is not working and why it is not working will help public health communications professionals course correct and create effective cancer messaging that resonates with people and spurs them to take preventive action.

This podcast episode features Trabian Shorters, who introduces "Asset Framing," a cognitive skill that reframes how we perceive and describe individuals and communities. Shorters argues that our societal habit of defining people by their deficits leads to cynicism and undermines efforts for positive change. Asset Framing, conversely, is presented as a simple yet powerful approach that dignifies individuals and fosters more effective, hopeful outcomes by focusing on inherent strengths and potential.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Skill-Building Seminar series.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Forum.

The Legislative Reporting Service website provides immediate access to the daily business of the North Carolina General Assembly. This robust online tool replaces the School’s traditional Daily Bulletin. Please visit this site daily while the North Carolina General Assembly is in session for up-to-the-minute information about legislation that will impact your organization.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Forum.

This brief guide will provide some basic practical information to improve your marketing and communications performance. Learn about the fundamental principles and practices of marketing and communications and find activities that you can deploy to create more value for your organization.

The "Marvelous Math Club," an afterschool program in a predominantly Black community, integrates math and psychology to foster asset- and justice-based thinking. This collaborative initiative, born from community requests, centers on students' experiences and builds a safe, culturally responsive learning environment. The club aims to empower elementary-aged students as "Math Leaders" by focusing on their strengths and promoting self-integrity.

In this session, we expand upon framing and move through exercises to frame your specific work for different audiences. We will also share framing strategies among participants to broaden our knowledge of effective framing practices.

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Forum.

Across North Carolina, a coordinated effort is underway to build communication as a foundational public health capability. Supported by North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services' Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) funding, this cross-sector initiative connects public agencies, nonprofit networks, and technology partners to strengthen how health information is created, shared, and trusted statewide.

This toolkit serves as a foundational guide for local health department professionals seeking to engage with policymakers. It aims to demystify communication with members of Congress, empowering users to advocate effectively for a stronger public health infrastructure and increased funding.

Policy and advocacy resources page on the NACCHO website

This toolkit provides governmental public health staff with a practical, structured way to build confidence engaging with policymakers, without lobbying or advocacy. This toolkit includes step-by-step guidance, templates, talking points, and planning resources.

Legislation outlining public health statutes in North Carolina

Check out our webpage to learn more about the Public Health Policy Forum.

A tool that provides evidence-based information, data tools, and publications to help identify health disparities, justify program funding, and design educational interventions that address public health community needs.

A resource hub for national public health - APHA, in coordination with its members and state and regional Affiliates, works with key decisionmakers to shape public policy to address today's ongoing public health concerns. Find resources about breaking down political buzzwords, data on the Affordable Care Act, explanations about policy briefs, webinars on advocacy, lobbying and education, and more.

This guide was designed for local health department staff who are tasked with communicating specific messages to the public or segments of the public. The guide provides a basic framework to use, including questions to consider when developing communications and evaluation strategies. It also includes considerations for how local health department professionals can incorporate health equity, social justice, and accessibility considerations, including health literacy, into their work.

Website for the General Assembly of NC

Website for the office of the Governor of NC

Founded in November 2011 as a North Carolina nonprofit, NCHN is an independent news organization devoted to covering health care in the state.

This is a inclusive comparative resource that includes publications, data and statistics, infographics, maps and more that focus on rural health. These resources may be useful for grant writing, research, state-level contacts, comparing state policies, and finding data sources by state.