Helping public health professionals deliver clear, confident messages under pressure
Working with the media is an important role for any organisation. Blue Lozenge worked with the public health teams, from both Reading Borough Council and West Berkshire Council to train team members in both proactive and reactive media relations in preparation for managing public health campaigns and crises.
Approach
When developing bespoke media training, we create a package designed to meet each client’s unique needs. For the Reading and West Berkshire Public Health team, this involved building confidence to engage with the media during health protection challenges, disease outbreaks, and other public health events. We asked each participant to answer a pre-training questionnaire which provided us with insight into how each participant felt about media training and their current strengths and weaknesses. There are three key areas we covered:
- The media landscape
Throughout the media training, we provided a thorough understanding of the media landscape and identified the key audiences for both public health teams and good and bad practices when handling the media.
2. Narrative and messaging
We worked with both public health teams to help refine their current messaging and ensure its suitability for media use.
- Practical skills and techniques
Each participant undertook multiple interviews to simulate interactions with different media outlets on a range of different issues. The idea of this is to help each individual build up their confidence and practice their responses to a range of different questions.
Outcome
The media training equipped both Reading Borough Council and West Berkshire Council’s public health teams with the confidence and skills to deliver clear, authoritative messages during critical public health events. Participants developed strong foundational knowledge of media relations, refined messaging techniques, and gained practical experience through realistic interview simulations.
This enhanced capability will enable the teams to proactively engage with media outlets during health campaigns and respond effectively to crisis situations, ensuring accurate public health information reaches communities while preventing the spread of misinformation. The training created a sustainable foundation for ongoing media engagement, with team members now able to represent their organisations professionally and communicate complex public health messages in accessible ways that build public trust and understanding.
If you need support with media training for your team, please contact us at: hello@bluelozenge.co.uk