“We hope this podcast will inspire you, our listeners, to be curious about the world we live in and recognize that public health is deeply integrated with many aspects of the human condition.”

Public Health Insight Podcast
Episode 0 – Intro to Public Health Insight

Introduction

The Public Health Insight (PHI) podcast series launched in March 2020 in the midst of an unprecedented global health emergency. Co-founded by a small group of public health professionals, PHI’s weekly podcast was a way to share insights and experiences on a range of public health, global health, and population health topics. PHI has since rapidly grown into a recognized name in public health podcasting, now reaching listeners in over 130 countries and more than 3000 cities. To date, PHI has released over 140 episodes covering a range of subjects including topical, current areas of public interest such as vaccine hesitancy, the opioid crisis, and mental health as well as issues that are not always thought of as health related like homelessness, racism, and climate change.

In the 98^th episode of the Public Health Insight podcast series, Co-founders Leshawn Benedict and Gordon Thane take the opportunity to re-introduce themselves by sharing their motivation, mission, vision, projects, initiatives, and some of the upcoming plans for PHI. 

In this article, we would like to take the opportunity to reflect on the following questions:

• WHO are the people behind Public Health Insight?

• WHY was Public Health Insight created?

• HOW does Public Health Insight disseminate information?

• WHAT have been Public Health Insight’s greatest achievements?

• WHAT’S NEXT for Public Health Insight?

WHO are the people behind Public Health Insight?

Public Health Insight (PHI) started with a small group of early career public health professionals who were looking for a platform to share their passion for all things public health. The atmosphere during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was one of uncertainty and fear for many, but the general shuttering of activities provided an opportunity for the group to slow down and make their public health podcast a reality. This medium provided the PHI founders with a more holistic experience working in public health in addition to their paid work. Through the podcast, PHI’s founders were able to delve into topics of interest beyond those they were able to engage with on a day-to-day basis through their regular jobs. 

As the podcast has grown in popularity, the PHI team has grown as well. PHI now includes more than 10 people from a diverse range of experiences, interests, and professional backgrounds including policy, research, ethics, health promotion, digital solutions, and more.

Find out more about the members of our team on the Public Health Insight website. 

Leshawn Benedict and Gordon Thane

Public Health Insight Co-founders

WHY was Public Health Insight created?

The inspiration behind PHI is well illustrated in the group’s mission and vision statements:

“[PHI’s] mission is to bridge the gap between communities, researchers, scientific evidence, practitioners, students, and future advocates in the field of global health and public health.”

“[PHI’s] vision is to ensure that public health information can be accessed, understood, and used by all.” 

The PHI team is passionate about public health and bringing visibility to the field. The founders noted that the most up-to-date and evidence-based public health resources are written for audiences with specialized knowledge in a specific public health or research area. Further, most resources are ‘locked away’ in journals requiring expensive fees to review, which tends to limit readership to only those with access through a university or research institute library. This reality inspired the founders of PHI to create an organization committed to finding innovative solutions that allowed the public to access robust public health information. 

HOW does Public Health Insight disseminate public health information?

Researchers in public health and other fields struggle with transferring the evidence and knowledge from their research into practice (Fafard & Hoffman, 2020). This has led to increased interest in knowledge translation (KT), or the process of synthesizing and disseminating complex, evidence-based information in a way that is readily accessible and usable by a target audience such as health workers, policy makers, or the general public (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2016). KT is central to PHI’s work in breaking down complicated topics and presenting them in a way the public can readily digest in the form of podcasts, blogs, and newsletters while actively engaging with social media.    

PHI Podcast Series

Every Tuesday at midnight (EST), PHI releases a podcast reviewing a public health topic.  Podcasting was chosen as a relevant, popular medium through which PHI could discuss the topic of interest and reach a wide audience. PHI podcasts feature a broad range of subject matters including but not limited to: 

• specific health conditions such as stroke, dementia, and tuberculosis

• social determinants of health such as education and poverty

• education and career path support for those wishing to pursue a career in public health

Every episode is carefully researched before being recorded, then edited and rigorously fact-checked by 2-3 people to ensure all information is accurate and evidence-informed. PHI frequently invites guests that are experts in the subject at hand to feature on the episode and help shed light on the issue, the work being done, and how the public can get involved. PHI has engaged a dedicated group of volunteers to produce written transcripts of each podcast episode to engage people who have difficulty listening to podcasts and to facilitate translation into languages other than English.  

The increase in listenership has inspired the PHI team to engage further with their audience in the form of live podcasts. These events have been widely successful and featured key guests who have been able to address listener questions in real time. 

Check out the PHI Podcast series to listen to the latest episodes. 

PHI Blog series

The PHI blog series provides an exploration of a variety of public health and global health issues and serves as a companion to the podcast series. A dedicated group of volunteers breaks down each podcast episode and highlights the major themes. The articles provide additional research and resources that may not have been covered during the podcast. The blog series gives an alternative medium to access public health information for those who are less interested in listening to podcasts, have difficulty hearing, or who are looking for more information on a specific podcast topic.

The blog series also features articles authored by public health professionals sharing their lived-experiences working in the fields of public and global health.  

PHI Newsletter

PHI additionally publishes a fortnightly, themed newsletter with carefully curated content. The newsletter presents a specific topic in quick, ‘bite size’ pieces with links to additional information for readers that wish to delve deeper into the subject. Depending on the topic, the newsletter may also contain professional development opportunities, conferences, certifications, courses, and job openings in the same theme.  Relevant videos, podcast episodes, and blogs are also included to give the reader a chance to further explore the topic at hand. 

You can subscribe to PHI’s newsletter here and explore past issues here.

PHI on Social Media

PHI actively engages with multiple social media platforms including LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Through these mediums, PHI shares relevant videos, infographics, and articles highlighting a public health topic of interest and upcoming events. 

One of the goals of public health communication and education is to combat the copious amount of misinformation that is ever present in the digital space. By actively engaging on social media, PHI is working to make accurate public health information ‘go viral’ by providing evidence-based content that is easily shared. 

You can connect with PHI on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

WHAT have been Public Health Insight’s greatest achievements?

Reach and Scope

One of PHIs biggest achievements is the rapid growth of the reach and scope of the podcast series. What started as a few public health professionals discussing topics of interest has grown into an engaging series featuring knowledgeable experts, far exceeding the original group’s expectations. Recognizable names in the public health arena have reached out to PHI seeking to present on the podcast, allowing the team to deliver rich, engaging content. 

Collaboration opportunities

The reach of PHI’s podcast series and the chance to chat with a range of professionals in a variety of fields has led to numerous collaboration opportunities. PHI has partnered with players across multiple public health disciplines, including:

• sponsoring a wide range of student-led public and global health conferences,

• co-organizing the One Health Connect 2021 event and subsequent report,

• partnering on a report and related podcast with ETIO Public Health Consultants addressing anti-Black racism, and

• serving as guest lecturers at the Colorado School of Public Health.

With each new opportunity for collaboration, PHI becomes more visible to a wider range of professionals and organizations working in and around public health. The goal of these collaborations is to break down the knowledge and expertise ‘silos’ to allow for cross-disciplinary co-operation, which is critical to solving public health challenges now and in the future. 

For a more thorough look at PHI’s collaborations, check out the PHI portfolio.

Publication

Following the success of the podcast series, the PHI founders had the opportunity to publish an article titled Podcasting as a Tool for Health Communication? The Public Health Insight Podcast and Emergent Opportunities (2021). This paper examines the PHI podcast’s role in communicating public health information as well as the opportunities that emerged from the series. The article highlights the role of podcasting in communicating high-quality public health information to new audiences beyond the usual scope of public health and calls for further research on the impact of podcasting on health outcomes (Benedict, Umakanthan, Thane, Wang, & Alhalbouni, 2021). 

Mentorship

Mentoring has long been recognized as valuable to career progression, professional development, and job satisfaction (Holmes, Warnes, O’Gara, & Nishimura, 2018). PHI founders noted that their own public health education and early-career would have benefited from having a mentor to help navigate the often murky path through public health degrees and early-career challenges. PHI team members have jumped at the opportunity to engage with future players in public health and provide guidance where possible. In the past, PHI has even opened virtual office hours to meet the demand of budding public and global health professionals reaching out for advice. 

WHAT’S NEXT for Public Health Insight?

For two and half years, the PHI team has been consistently releasing engaging, evidence-informed public health information that can be used by professionals, students, and the general public alike. Looking towards the remainder of 2022 and beyond, PHI plans to build upon its strengths including:

• finding and engaging with knowledgeable experts in multiple disciplines to feature in future podcasts who can shed light on their work and contributions towards public health

• expanding collaborations with partners in public health and other fields to break down the barriers between disciplines and foster a multidisciplinary approach to solving public health challenges now and in the future

• offering comprehensive, high-quality knowledge translation consulting services to public and global health organizations

• exploring new mediums to market and spread accurate public health messaging, inspiring others to help make public health knowledge ‘go viral’

Written by: Malissa Underwood