Sharing Your Science with the Media

The purpose of this virtual Learning Institute is to help public health scientists identify tools that are critical to successful media interviews, develop those tools and describe different approaches to implementing those tools during interviews with the media. This course will be led by three science communication professionals from SciLine, a program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that connects scientists and journalists to bring scientific evidence to general audiences through news stories. 

The course will include insights and lessons learned from facilitating more than 5,000 interactions between scientists and journalists. Through presentations, discussions, hands-on activities and mock interviews, participants will identify language tools that can make scientific concepts accessible to general audiences; discuss public health terminology with connotations or definitions in the general population that differ from academic and technical usage; describe different types of uncomfortable situations that might arise during an interview and how to navigate them; and identify their main messages and how to communicate them during interviews.