We all have a role to play in encouraging our communities to support our young people. SAHRC creates and shares resources and learning opportunities that help state public health professionals and their partners champion adolescents (and adolescence).
SAHRC's strategic communications resources meet you wherever you are: whether you are building your own awareness about healthy youth development or engaging others in dialogue about systems and Social Determinants of Health.
Are you new to strategic communications?
- This one-page cheat sheet, adapted from Spitfire Strategies, helps you think about your Big Fat Hairy Goals and this year’s realistic objectives.
- Feeling strong? Now visit Spitfire Strategies’ SmartChart 4.0, an online tool that guides you through a deeper version of the above cheat sheet.
Are you a semi-experienced communicator?
- Up your reframing and anti-racism game with this new SAHRC resource on messaging HYD.
- Plagiarize (with Frameworks Institute’s blessing) the Core Story of Adolescence, adding the details that make it relevant to your jurisdiction, populations, and communications strategy.
- Dig deeper into Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s resources on framing Social Determinants of Health.
Are you a confident communicator pushing your edge?
- Distill your communications strategy (tools above) into a 60-second elevator speech that articulates your perfect-world scenario, describes the gaps between your jurisdiction/program and that scenario, and what your goals are this year to bridge those gaps. Practice it in real time.
- Revisit your assumptions about the things that motivate and scare your intended audience. In these fast-changing political and cultural times, make sure your messages still speak to the folks you want to reach.
- Polish your diplomacy skills as an ambassador for the larger field with these public health framing and language recommendations from the Berkeley Media Studies Group.
- And the CDC's Healthy Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication and Resources and Style Guides for Framing Health Equity and Avoiding Stigmatizing Language can help you make sure you’re addressing all groups inclusively and respectfully. (What some folks call “woke policing” we at SAHRC see as basic good manners and strategic communication.)
