I had the privelege of attending a lecture last night about Global Public Health and the World Health Organization(WHO). I refer to this as a privelege because I am looking to the public health sector for grad school and was very excited about attending. (A special thanks to Dr. Russell for announcing the lecture a few weeks ago).
To add to the experience, I gathered insightful information about public relations and its function with the WHO in communicating disease outbreaks. The main lesson: Break the news, and do it FAST!
The guest speaker was Dick Thompson, a veteran Time Magazine reporter and war correspondent, who is the team leader for Pandemic Outbreak Communication with WHO. He elaborated on how quickly diseases like SARS spreads and how it is vital for communicators to report these outbreaks immediately.
Although the information provided in this lecture may have come off as common sense, I think that it is a great reflection on pr as a communication tool. The things we do in pr, such as breaking bad news quickly and clearly seems to be common sense in itself, but people often take this for granted. I believe that this is one of the many reasons why pr has become a profession.
With that said, I look forward to learning more about how I can use my pr degree in the public health sector, and hopefully putting this into action in the near future.
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