Making Every
Message Count
What is Talking Health?
The Talking Health training elevates the communications skills of public health practitioners and their multi-sector partners across the country. Through engaging content, this training seeks to fill skill gaps in the field and ensure the public health workforce has opportunities to learn from experts and one another while building their knowledge in communications best practices.
In 2022, the de Beaumont Foundation published Talking Health: A New Way to Communicate about Public Health, which drew from the expertise of practitioners, as well as research findings from the Foundation’s 2018 Public Health Reaching Across Sectors (PHRASES) initiative. This book provided strategies and tools to help public health professionals communicate more effectively about public health, strengthen community partnerships, and improve outcomes in a post-COVID-19 world.
The book’s popularity led to the development of an in-person training on its key lessons and skills. To be able to reach more individuals, de Beaumont developed this on-demand version of the training. This new version of the training builds on 2025 research by the Foundation on communicating about public health to diverse audiences.
Public health communications is a critical skill that helps build trust, leverage relationships, and improve community health. Unfortunately, most public health professionals and their multi-sector partners have had little or no formal training in communications. What’s more, most existing communications trainings are not tailored for or accessible to public health professionals and their collaborators. Even if they may not view themselves as communicators, public health practitioners consistently and regularly communicate with diverse communities.
The Talking Health training equips these individuals with the confidence and competence to communicate more effectively. Through this course, the de Beaumont Foundation aims to strengthen public health communications and improve trust in public health.
Talking Health is an on-demand, self-paced course consisting of five modules that build upon each other. Through the course capstone project, participants address a real-world communications challenge specific to their work and use it to practice key concepts from each module. By the end of the training, participants will leave with a comprehensive, printable, and downloadable plan to address their communications challenge. Modules include the following topics:
- Making the Case for Public Health Communications
- Bridging Gaps in Public Health Communication
- Creating Audience-Focused Messages
- Public Health Storytelling
- Message Testing
Each module includes a series of short videos of subject matter experts explaining communications best practices, followed by practical application activities. Each module should take around one hour to complete. The course is interactive and engaging with dynamic animations, self-reflections, practical applications, and a capstone project that brings it all together. The entire training should take six hours to complete.
Talking Health is a comprehensive and research-backed communications training that provides practical solutions to real-life health communications challenges. The training is designed by and for public health professionals and aims to help them and their partners communicate effectively with diverse audiences. It fills the gap between detailed trainings meant for communications experts and general trainings that lack practical, real-world applications.
Currently, access to all Talking Health on-demand modules is free.
Talking Health is designed to support public health professionals of all types, no matter their role, level (e.g., management or individual contributors), jurisdiction type (e.g., local, state, federal, Tribal), education or organization type (e.g., government public health agencies, academic institutions, public health institutes, grassroots organizations, non-profits, and others).
The training is also designed to support multi-sector partners working in education, transportation, housing, parks and recreation, health care, economic development, and other areas.
While the course does not currently qualify for continuing education credits, it is under consideration. Upon completion of the on-demand course, participants will receive digital certificates that can be posted on personal websites and social media.