Insights to Practice

Keynote Address
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina and Amanda Kwong, MPH

It’s often said that when public health works, it is invisible. But as people across the globe and the systems they rely on to remain safe and healthy are increasingly being pushed to the brink, is invisible public health really what we all need? In this session, Dr. Katelyn Jetelina unpacks the nuances of what public health is, what it isn’t, and why we need it to be visible more than ever before.

Session 1: How to Communicate to Build Understanding of Public Health
Katy Evans, PhD and Emma Dewhurst, MPP

Learn more about de Beaumont Foundation’s new research-based message strategy to build community members’ understanding of public health and its value, Communicating About Public Health: A Toolkit for Public Health Professionals. In this interactive session, research leads shared talking points, examples, and strategies to fill knowledge gaps about public health.

Session 2: Compelling Stories from Complicated Data
Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS, Dr. Amy Maxmen, and Dr. Sarah Story

We know that people are wired for story. We know that people can be compelled to action when a message is structured in this time-tested mode of communication. But how can public health professionals and communicators use storytelling in their own work, particularly when the stories to be told are often shrouded in large, complicated data sets? Learn from expert communicators who have tackled these challenges head-on so that you can bring effective stories to life in your communications.

Session 3: How to Communicate About Health Equity
Dr. J. Nadine Gracia, Dr. Julie Sweetland, and Allyn Brooks-LaSure

Gain new perspective from leaders at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the FrameWorks Institute, and Trust for America’s Health, who shared research-informed insights on how to best communicate about health equity in today’s environment.

Session 4: What Makes an Effective Public Health Messenger?
Nalini Padmanabhan, Dr. Amelia Burke-Garcia, Matt Motta, PhD, and Brinleigh Murphy-Reuter

Organizing the right messages to be shared at the right time and selecting the best channels through which to distribute them is no small task. But what if, after all that effort, the messenger is not clear? How do you know that you have the right public health messenger for a crucial message so that it delivers the intended impact and drives the greatest result? How can you expand your view of who the best messengers are and begin to bring them into your communications efforts? Learn from our panel of experts who shared insights and tips on what makes an effective public health messenger.

Keynote Speaker
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina is an epidemiologist and scientific communicator. She is the co-founder of the non-profit Health Trust Initiative, an adjunct professor at Yale School of Public Health, and former Senior Scientific Advisor to the White House and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, Dr. Jetelina is the publisher of Your Local Epidemiologist- a public health newsletter that “translates” ever-evolving science to the public, reaching over 500 million views in over 133 countries. Dr. Jetelina has received numerous national awards, including recently being named a TIME100 Most Influential Person in Health. Katelyn resides with her husband and two toddlers in San Diego, California.  

Amanda Kwong, MPH

Amanda Kwong is the Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC) Director at the de Beaumont Foundation. As PHCC’s Director, Amanda manages the development of timely, relevant, and practical tools for public health communicators across the country to use. Through these communication tools and learning opportunities, PHCC helps health professionals communicate more effectively to ensure that everyone has what they need to make informed decisions about their health. Previously, Amanda was a Campaign Director at the Ad Council, where she spent almost six years overseeing the development, implementation, and evaluation of fully integrated multimedia communication programs on behalf of national non-profit organizations and federal government agencies.

Amanda holds an MPH from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a BA in Psychology from Syracuse University. It is through Amanda’s unique background in advertising, social impact, and public health where her deep interest in effective public health communications continues to grow. 

Katy Evans, PhD

Katy Evans is Senior Director of the Health Justice Program at The FrameWorks Institute. Prior to joining FrameWorks, Katy led partnerships and public health communications work at the de Beaumont Foundation. In that role, she led the foundation’s research and programs to strengthen how we communicate about public health, including public opinion polling, training and capacity building, and the messaging research that led to Communicating about Public Health: A Toolkit for Public Health Professionals. Katy holds a PhD in American Studies from Boston University, as well as an MA from Kings College, London and a BA from Boston College. 

Emma Dewhurst, MPP

Emma Dewhurst, MPP, is a Senior Program and Research Associate at the de Beaumont Foundation. Her work includes an array of evaluation, research, and program efforts, with a focus on translating research to strengthen the foundation’s impact. Emma manages the foundation’s public opinion polling and message testing research and leads evaluation and research for the Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC). Emma earned her MPP with a concentration in program evaluation and policy analysis from the George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. She also holds a BA in political science and a minor in economics from the University of Cincinnati. 

Dr. Amy Maxmen

Dr. Amy Maxmen, public health correspondent, covers efforts to prevent disease and improve well-being outside of the medical system, and the obstacles that stand in the way. Before joining KFF Health News in 2024, she was a senior reporter at Nature covering health inequities, global health, infectious diseases, and genomics. She’s also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, National Geographic, and many other outlets. Maxmen’s work has garnered awards such as a Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, and an AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award. She was the 2022-23 Edward R. Murrow Press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a 2020 Knight Science Journalism at MIT fellow, and the recipient of several grants from the Pulitzer Center that allowed her to report on outbreaks in Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and elsewhere. She earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in evolutionary biology. 

Dr. Sarah Story

Dr. Sarah Story grew up in Central California, where she got her start in public service in political campaign communications and community organizing. She later earned a Master of Public Policy, a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology, and a PhD in Policy Analysis from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research, and subsequent professional work, are focused on the role of social and economic opportunity in creating health inequities. Her interest in studying the effects of segregation on maternal health outcomes led her to Kansas City, Missouri, where she was first an assistant professor at the University of Missouri Bloch School of Management and then became the deputy director for the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department. She then spent the next part of her career building technology tools to democratize data for Public Health. Now happily back in local government, Dr. Story is the Executive Director of the Jefferson County, Colorado Health Department.  

Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS

Jessica Malaty Rivera is an infectious disease epidemiologist and award-winning science communicator. She earned her MS in Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Georgetown School of Medicine and has dedicated the last 15 years of her career to emerging disease surveillance, public health policy, and vaccine advocacy. Her specialty is in translating complex scientific concepts into impactful, judgement-free, and accessible information for diverse audiences. From 2020-2021, she served as the Science Communication Lead for The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.

Currently, she is a Research Fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator, a DrPH student and Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Senior Advisor at the de Beaumont Foundation.  Between her day jobs and being a full-time mother to three little kids, she also dedicates several hours a week to promoting science literacy and debunking misinformation on social media. 

Dr. Julie Sweetland

Dr. Julie Sweetland is a sociolinguist and a senior advisor at the FrameWorks Institute, a nonprofit that equips change-makers to lead productive public conversations on scientific and social issues. FrameWorks’ unique approach to communications research shapes public discourse across the nation and around the world. Their impact was recognized in 2015 with the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, otherwise known as the “organizational genius grant.”

Since joining FrameWorks in 2012, Dr. Sweetland has designed and led strategic reframing initiatives on issues like climate change, health equity, and childhood adversity. Since 2017, Julie has worked primarily with the public health sector, bringing the science and strategy of framing to health topics like health equity, tobacco control, maternal mortality, and childhood vaccination. Her skill in translating framing research into communication strategy has helped advocates, policymakers, and scientists drive social change. Dr. Sweetland is a first-generation college student, a graduate of Georgetown University, and earned her MA and PhD in linguistics at Stanford University.

Allyn Brooks-LaSure

Allyn Brooks-LaSure has served as vice president, Communications at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) since 2020, leveraging more than 25 years of international communications, management, and policy experience. He leads the implementation of a high-impact communications strategy to support mindset changes and drive policies that address health equity. 

Brooks-LaSure held other leadership roles at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, as a U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officer, and as a political appointee at the Environmental Protection Agency, where he co-led all aspects of web communications, public engagement, media relations, and production for the agency. Brooks-LaSure has also served as spokesperson for two U.S. Senators, the National Prostate Cancer Coalition, and the Save Darfur Coalition. He led public relations client accounts for the Microsoft Corporation and the U.S. Army Accessions Command while working at the Caraway Group, a Washington, D.C.-based minority-woman-owned communications firm.  

Dr. J. Nadine Gracia

Dr. J. Nadine Gracia is the President and CEO of Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), a nonprofit, nonpartisan public health policy, research and advocacy organization that promotes optimal health for every person and community. Dr. Gracia is a national health equity leader with extensive leadership experience in federal government, the nonprofit sector, academia, and professional associations. As President and CEO, she leads TFAH’s work to advance sound public health policy, advance health equity, address the social determinants of health, and make health promotion and disease prevention a national priority. 

Prior to joining TFAH, Dr. Gracia served in the Obama Administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health and Director of the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Matt Motta, PhD 

Matt Motta (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Health Law, Policy, & Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health. His research aims to identify the social and political determinants of anti-science attitudes, and investigate their health policy impact. He also designs survey and field experiments that assess the effectiveness of health promotion messages on topics related to vaccination, mental health, climate change, and evidence-based health policy more broadly. As part of his research activities, he also conducts public health opinion research as a Research Fellow at The Policy Lab, and assesses the effectiveness of health promotion messaging as a Faculty Affiliate with The Center for Health Communication at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health. Motta is the author of the book Anti-Scientific Americans, published with Oxford University Press (2024). In it, he offers a data-driven account of the prevalence, origins, and policy consequences of anti-intellectualism in American public life. His research has been featured in popular press outlets like The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, CBS News, and Scientific American, and has been published in academic journals across the social, medical, and environmental sciences.   

Nalini Padmanabhan, MPH

Nalini is a communications director at the de Beaumont Foundation, where she leads and oversees the implementation of communication strategies to extend the Foundation’s reach, influence, and impact. Throughout her career, she has worked to advance health and science in the nonprofit, government, and private sectors, with experience ranging from strategy to implementation and spanning traditional and digital communications approaches. 

Before joining the Foundation, Nalini led immuno-oncology and lung cancer communications at AstraZeneca, supporting complex projects that brought together industry and nonprofits to support patients with cancer and advocate for policies that drive improved outcomes. Prior to that, she led marketing and communications at the American Society of Human Genetics and worked in infectious disease communications at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Nalini earned her Master of Public Health, with a concentration in health communication and marketing and a certificate in health policy, from the George Washington University. She holds a BA in molecular & cell biology and psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Brinleigh Murphy-Reuter 

Brinleigh Murphy-Reuter is the Founder & CEO of Science To People, a social impact organization advancing public understanding through accessible science communication. They are developing VeriSci, an AI-powered platform that empowers institutions, content creators, and science communicators to share accurate, simple, and culturally relevant information quickly and at scale. With nearly a decade of experience at YouTube and Google, where she honed her expertise in technology, scale, communication, and prosocial strategy, Brinleigh now leverages that background at the intersection of media, education, and public health. A proud Harvard Graduate School of Education alumna, she focused on harnessing technology to support learning in the digital age. 

Dr. Amelia Burke-Garcia

Dr. Amelia Burke-Garcia is a seasoned health communications professional with 20 years of experience in health communication program planning, implementation, and evaluation. At NORC, she leads the organization’s Center for Health Communication Science, in which role, she designs and implements strategies that leverage the science of communication to influence behavior. Since 2020, she has been overseeing the award-winning How Right Now campaign, which aims to increase people’s ability to cope and be resilient. She also has been examining the role of influencers in health communication and research for more than a decade and has recently expanded this work, specifically leading what she is calling, “Health Communication AI”. Dr. Burke-Garcia is the author of the books, Influencing Health: A Comprehensive Guide to Working with Social Media Influencers, and Communicating Through a Pandemic: A Chronicle of Experiences, Lessons Learned, and a Vision for the Future. She has been highlighted by the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, for her work in honor of Women’s History Month and has been named to VeryWellHealth.com’s list of 10 Modern Female Innovators Shaking Up Health Care.