Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Kellee Waters.
I'm with C.D.C. in emergency and response operations.
Thank you for joining us today for today's webinar entitled
communication partnership for public health emergencies.
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O219.
To ask us a question, use the Q&A button.
Closed captions are available for this webinar.
Today, we will hear from Jonathan Lynch a core member of the EPIC team.
He is a Forder broadcast medical news producer who has been a producer
at C.D.C. for 16 years.
He studied mathematics, economics and business.
He applied disciplines to building EPIC partnerships.
These are a collection of relationships that C.D.C. maintains to help
share potentially life-saving information during public health
emergencies.
Although Jonathan usually handles the Q&A session of the EPIC webinars,
today, he will be our presenter Jonathan, please begin.
Jonathan Lynch: Thank you.
One second.
There we go.
Next slide, please.
So first, we're aware that some people may be connecting because they
want to know more about the novel Coronavirus outbreak.
This webinar is not focused on the topic, although the suggestions from
this presentation apply to many different types of public health
concerns, including infectious disease outbreak, if you want to know
more go to cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019.
I'm a math nerd, so I apologize for this, but they are letting me get
away with this of indulgence here and it will explain how it is so hard
how you can communicate through a complex social network.
I have cards.
I have shuffled them and which you may not know is this deck of cards in
this order more than likely this is the first time in the entire history
of the world that a deck of cards has been in this order.
More than likely, the last time it will ever happen, so it seems
impossible on the surface, but if you look at the math on this, first
card has one out of 52 possibilities, the next one, one out of 51, that
is called a 52 factorial and it is more than the number of atoms on
iter.
The reason this is relevant to partnership communicating and when you're
communicating to other partners and constituents, you have you a pathway
your message flows through, you can't predict how it is going to go.
Instead of being precise, you have to work with general principles and I
will show you in a minute and sometimes you get a great result and
sometimes you get a less than ideal result.
Next slide, please.
Here is why we need communication partnerships.
The channels we work with for communicating, such as news media, social
media, various clinical channels reach specific audiences that might be
effective, but might not reach everyone.
Communication partnerships help to reach the hard to reach people that
may be at most risk, few examples are isolated people during hurricanes,
elderly people during flu season, migrant workers during a mosquito
outbreak.
Next slide, please.
Here are a few examples of the partners that we use to accomplish this.
Pardon me.
We have 60 communication partners, we have some faith-based partners,
governmental partners, some partners who work in the emergency response
community, some who have an international presence, but also a presence
in the U.S., some work at a local level.
Next slide, please.
These partners were selected for the ability to help us reach people, so
I'm going to do a quick demonstration and I am going to present my
screen here, just a second.
Share, share, OK.
So I'm going to demonstrate why we need to, not only work with partners,
but why it is so important to maximize the methods we use to work with
partners to have successful communication.
This is an application that I designed that demonstrates how viral
messaging works and why it is inconsistent even with the same
parameters.
Each represents a layer and each dot represents an organization.
The odds of a partner for this simulation passing your message on are
50% and the number of messages they pass it on to is set to two, so run
the simulation and it reefs one person.
I run it again and two organizations, but you can see with the exact
same parameters, just a few tweaks can make a difference between
reaching a few or as we see here, fairly extensive market penetration
with a message.
It is important to understand those techniques that increase the
probability of retransmission and the number of organizations that you
pass your message on to.
Can we go back to the slides?
So here is how the principles apply and in that simulation, each node is
a communication partner, each line is a message of transmission.
The probability of a message being transmitted can be low if the
organization is not motivated to, they don't know you very well, they
don't trust you very well.
They may be busy, they may be sick.
That can happen.
The more nodes you want to reach, the harder it is to be successful
because there is a possibility of the message being interrupted each
time.
So what that means is flat networks is better, that is if you're
starting from where you are and reaching several different organizations
and it may go two or three levels down before it reaches the target
population, there is a higher probability of success than expecting them
to do the work for you.
We find direct outreach improves retransmission, so when we're trying to
pass on what is potentially a life-saving message, we share that
information with a partner and we call them up and say we're sharing
this information, can you please share this?
Getting that personal interaction oh, yeah, we'll pass it on that makes
a huge difference for us.
Finally, messages can be corrupted.
If you are, for instance, sharing information with the media and rather
taking what you produce, they are interpreting it and sharing the
interpretation with the message.
If you have an electronic message and people are passing it straight
from your organization to the end user it gets mostly uncorrupted by the
time it reaches and that can help with accurate information sharing.
Next slide, please.
I divided this up into steps.
Step one is segmenting the audience and anyone who has take an marketing
class recognizes this as a first step.
There are certain questions you can asking yourself, which groups will
not likely be reached through mainstream media?
If you're relying on media or other reliable networks and that covers
all your needs that's fine, but if you think about those with limited
English proficiency, those who have sensory barriers, difficulty with
hearing or vision, people who might be isolated or come from a sub
culture that is socially, partially disconnected from the mainstream
culture, all of those things may be a concern, so you need to find
organizations that serve those groups.
You also have to ask, who will need specific information that they are
unlikely to receive from mainstream media, so you might be sharing
messages with regular media outlets, but certain specific pieces of
information may be something they might not be as interested in passing
on, so specific information for pregnant women, older adults, people
experiencing power outages for multiple reasons those messages you may
need to work with communication partners, so you find the partners who
can deliver the messages to high-risk groups.
Finally, which groups may not have -- I have a visibility problem here,
which groups may be disconnected from your organization even if they are
otherwise connected to sort of a larger social network, so it may be
that your natural communication recipients are sort of different from
the groups from like a particular group you want to reach, so you may
need to find a specialty organization to reach a group because it is not
connected to your organization.
Next slide.
OK, so here is some examples of audio segmentation from the EPIC team
for reaching Spanish-speaking populations, we have more than one for a
lot of these examples, we have a partner with the Hispanic federation.
One example for sub cultures, we made a partnership with the center for
Haitian studies in southern Florida that help to communicate about zika
to pregnant Haitian women during the outbreak.
We have a couple of migrant farm workers organizations that we're
connected to as well.
Cultural isolation, people experiencing homelessness can be isolated,
not always actually, they may have a degree in electronic to libraries,
but they can be socially isolated, so we have two different
organizations that focus on homelessness and we have partners with the
public library association who serves a large homeless population and
they are helpful in sharing information.
Another example is for persons experiencing Hearing Loss Association of
America, they have been an excellent partner of ours for multiple
reasons.
Next slide, please.
Step two, identify partners who can help with communication activities.
It is not enough that the partners serve an audience you need to reach,
you need to make sure they have the ability to share information, so
seek out partners who can provide information to you, to redistribute to
others in your network that can be a useful tool and EPIC has done that,
seek out partners who can disseminate information to targeted audiences
that means they have a constituent you might want to reach, they have a
mechanism to reach the constituents and they have sufficient staff size
and engagement and personal interest to accomplish this.
Finally, partners who can offer insight on communication needs.
On the previously slide, I mentioned the hearing loss association of
America, they influenced us to provide live closed captioning on our
webinars and they are right about that.
It is nice to not only get someone who can distribute messages, but can
help inform you on how to do it better.
Next slide.
So of course, we can think about sectors in many different ways.
We focus on public sector, nonprofit sector and private sector.
Next slide.
In the public sector, when you're seeking out partners, typically, we
break it down to federal, state, and local levels, federal partners are
C.D.C., FEMA and SAMHSA.
Federal can be very large and no organization has perfect inside the
organization communication, so that means if you want a specific federal
partner for a specific activity, seek out the teams, the functions, the
groups that work on the activity and partner with them directly that
just seems more effective than trying to work from the top down in the
Federal Government.
At the sate level, of course, those working in public health, state
health departments are wonderful partners on several levels, but also
consider working with state-run assistance programs because they might
serve populations that you have a high interest in reaching with
communication activities.
They might have a ready mechanism to share the messages.
At the local level, schools.
Teach the students, teach the parents, if you can share information with
schools, you can share the information and it is a great way to get
information to the entire family, so something to bear in mind.
For the nonprofit sector, which we have many nonprofit partners,
consider emergency response organizations, a lot of people attend our
webinars are coming from emergency response organizations, but consider
partnering with them even if you're going to work on more than just,
like disasters like hurricanes or floods or something like that, because
they have a lot of resources and a lot of motivated to volunteers, of
course, national VOAD is a great organization, if you look at state and
local VOAD's are a great resource to partner with.
Faith-based organizations can often reach specific populations, which is
helpful.
They are often highly motivated to and they established a lot of trust
with the people they serve, so that is a great way to, again, get a
motivated to partner who is likely to pass on your message and
communication based -- sorry, community-based organizations may serve a
specific sub culture and they might have several excellent ways to share
information with that group as well.
Next slide.
The private sector, I have heard multiple times that people are hesitant
to partner with the private sector because they are worried about the
inappropriateness of partnering with a government organization in the
private sector, but when we're talking about emergency response, we're
talking about saving lives and that comes first.
When we're talking about communication partnerships, it's worth doing
and we just work through all of the other potential difficulties.
You can seek out specific companies if they serve populations they want
to reach, trade organizations.
We are partners with a couple of pharmacy trade organizations and a
couple other organizations as well that serve kind of the larger
business community, of course, clinical partners, which I will mention
on the next slide and the reason they matter so much is, especially
during a natural disaster, during several different kinds of
emergencies, they can be different contacts, so pharmacy, grocery store,
gas stations are the first place people go that is why they from use to
feel partner with.
Next slide.
So clinical partners is a special topic and C.D.C. has its own team
devoted to establishing partnerships for emergency communications.
Public health emergencies can present unique challenges and providing
the right information for clinicians can save lives.
It can save lives because it can influence what the clinicians do and
clinicians can influence the actions their patients take.
Developing and maintaining strong partnerships with clinical
organizations is critical for successful notification for sharing and
training because clinical partner organizations serve more -- they may
have thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of clinicians they serve
and more than just physicians.
We share information with the right clinical organizations.
You have an excellent ability to reach a large number of people and that
is why we have our own separate team for this.
Next slide.
Step three, make connections before an emergency.
Sometimes you have to have what we call a just in time partnership, but
if you can build your trust, build your relationship ahead of last time
means making initial contact, having a discussion to reach an
understanding of how each organization operates, how you benefit each
other and what your mutual expectations are.
We typically do not seek out formal agreements because they become more
difficult than they're worth, but for many people it may be help to feel
have a memorandum of understanding.
Next slide.
Step four, maintaining connections.
This occupies a large portion of my work, it is not just enough to
establish the connection.
You have to make sure you keep it going that means updating and
confirming contact information, because sometimes your point of contact
has moved on and sometimes you have to re-establish, rebuild the
partnership from scratch that means reaching out to them and having
conversations.
We like to feature our partners in our newsletters.
It is a great way to show what excellent partners we have and it is a
great way to maintain the relationship and just in general, mutually
participating in activities can help maintain the connection.
Finally, step five where all of your work has paid off, working together
during emergencies.
The first thing I would say about this is listen to their needs.
if you're sharing information to help people, you want the information
to be as focused on as possible on the needs of the people you're trying
to help.
Organizations that represent those people can tell you exactly what you
need to send, need to share to have maximum impact.
Listen to their needs.
Obtain appropriate information from other partners, so C.D.C. is often
the primary generator of information and information products, but not
always, and others doing this kind of work may not be the primary
generators.
If you established a relationship with FEMA or HHS or other sources, you
know where to get the information, quickly go, get the information and
share it with your partner organizations and they are going to share it
through their channels.
Next slide.
to Milwaukee this work, you need to have effective answers, a few simple
tips.
We talked about what partners telling you what their constituents need,
which means you have content that will have the most impact.
It should be short, should be relevant, give positive action steps and
you might need to repeat the message.
A lot of this comes from cirque, which C.D.C. does a lot about that
topic and I would suggest to learn more about creating effective
messages.
Next slide, please.
Here are some examples of successful EPIC partnership activities.
In 2017, the national community pharmacist association, an excellent
partner and excellent organization shared information on pharmacies that
were open shortly after hurricane Harvey.
So this is critical information, didn't have access to them and didn't
know where to go, so we took that information, that list, shared it with
the EPIC partners and other groups locally, so they could share the
information with people in the affected area, so people could access
their medications.
Another example, C.D.C. shared Haitian documents with the organization
during the zika outbreak.
This organization provides clinical care for Haitians in Florida, so it
was a great opportunity to have documents printed in the appropriate
language so they could share with pregnant Haitian women to help prevent
getting zika.
Peter from the national disaster interfaiths presented an EPIC webinar
about the ways congregations can contribute during emergencies and that
was an example of a shared activity that builds a strong connection and
we continue to have a strong connection with them.
Next slide.
So another example, we have created just in time partnerships with those
who serve the Congo.
We reached out to them.
We happen to have a staff member from the Congo who helped us with this
and we shared information with leaders so they can share the information
and some will share the information with friends and family back in D.
R. C.
Next slide.
Mere is a picture from working with communication partners in Puerto
Rico where we were handing out a variety of information and supplies to
help with the zika outbreak, actually.
Here are lessons we learned from these interactions, working with the
partners.
Respect the partner's mission.
It is a two-way street.
We're trying to accomplish something, it is not about how they help us.
It is about how we help each other.
If you go into it with that mindset, it will create a trusting
relationship which means the.
Works during an emergency.
Making regular contact, assisting them with their information needs
because you may have specific types of information they can use, using
their expertise, so just as C.D.C. would have expertise in infectious
diseases, for example.
If we work with organizations that represent people experiencing
homelessness, they can provide us with knowledge that we can use and
for, ors having an opportunity to use their expertise professionally,
especially on a large scale helps build and maintain their high
reputations, so it is beneficial on both sides to use your partner's
expertise.
This can be summed up as understanding the entire value of exchange.
This is a concept in business, where it is not an exchange of one thing
for another.
You're providing a lot.
Our partners may provide expertise, communication channels, a type of
validation or vouching for the partners they work with and we might
provide critical information for example, access to C.D.C. experts.
Understanding the full exchange that goes on there really helps perceive
the value of the partners that you seek out and can work with.
Next slide.
There are sticking points and these are things to bear in mind.
A lot of organizations have controversies, so you have to do background
research.
Just be careful.
You don't want to get mired down in something that might cause
reputational harm to your organization.
Looking out for political sensitivities or strong political bias.
We're a public health organization.
We work with organizations, with partners that some way contribute to
the public health, so for us this has not been a major issue, but
something to consider.
You want to make sure you have the resources to be a good partner and
make sure they have the resources to be a good partner, otherwise it
winds up being a waste of everyone's time.
It is worth considering if there is distrust from any constituents, it
might mean you need to go to extra lengths to establish a trusted
relationship.
Language barriers are a huge concern and it can be difficult to measure
success.
Like I mentioned, sending a message through a network that may go
through nodes before reaching somebody, you really don't know.
You don't have any means of seeing if it is working.
You can generally see if your total communication efforts are having
some effects.
It can be difficult to precisely measure the success of any given
activity.
A few skills, I am a student of conflict resolution methodology and I
recommend that for absolutely everyone.
Cultural competence and please be sure to check out, if you go to the
C.D.C. EPIC website, you will see that we had a webinar on cultural
competence, but we have a website that provides some information on how
to learn and acquire cultural competence because that is a critical part
of working with different partners and communicating across the cultural
boundaries and languages as needed for reaching your constituency.
Next slide.
Here are a few partnership resources that can be useful for reaching,
here is one for reaching at-risk populations in an emergency.
Another one that describes principles of community engagement and the
CERC chapter on community engagement and I recommend studying the CERC
manual if you have time.
Next slide.
That's it.
We can start taking questions.
>> Kellee: Thank you, Jonathan.
We will transition to the Q&A session.
Lisa, can you read the first question?
>> Lisa: Do you have any thoughts about making sure about partners do
not feel they are being used in a one-way relationship?
Jonathan Lynch: Absolutely.
The most important thing is when you are taking action to serve their
needs follow through.
That's the most important point in all of this.
I mean, when our partners reached to us for information or help in
something they are working on, we don't always succeed, but we always
responsible, we always try.
We always make sure they know that we're not using them, that we see
this as a two-way thing.
Also, if you -- if you promote what your partner does, it makes you look
good because it shows you have a mindset of wanting to create a culture
of cooperation that makes you look good to your constituents and it
certainly builds a good rapport with your partners.
Lisa, next question.
>> Lisa: Thank you very much.
Anonymous attendee, can you please explain what is a flat network?
Jonathan Lynch: Well, I can.
OK, I hope you can see my hands here.
You start from one point and you go to the next node in your
communication network and you go down one more level and down one more
level and if you go 50 levels through, that means the message goes
through 50, ors before it reaches your target audience that is likely to
fail.
That's likely -- the message may get corrupted, too many opportunities
for failure.
If, on the other hand, you have 50 different partners that you're
working with and it goes from you to all 50 of them and from them to one
more layer down to the constituencies then you're not going through as
many layers of communication, which is more work, because you have to
reach more partners on the outset of the network, but a much higher
probability of success.
If you want to get deeper into the math nerdiness of it, please e-mail
CDC@gov, I'm happy to follow up on that.
>> Lisa: Could you talk a bit about how you engage partners during
routine times?
Jonathan Lynch: We can.
So we actually have taken a lot of time to figure out how we're going to
go about doing this.
We don't want to just call people and say hey, how it is going, glad to
see you are doing well.
We want to have meaningful interactions.
During non, for us what we call a nonactivation period or a
pre-emergency period, we engage in a lot of preparedness work, so we
engage our partners in the same preparedness work.
By doing that, we're constantly engaged with them.
We're helping them stay at the level they need for when an emergency
happens, then of course, we have the trust built up, so I would say
during nonactivation find reasons to work with your partners on that
preparedness, as well as engaged, shared communication activities.
>> Lisa: Thank you very much.
Our next question, can you share phi the role of C.D.C. versus state or
local partners during national emergencies, particularly as it is harder
to reach groups to ensure they don't fall through the cracks?
Jonathan Lynch: There is a phrase that all disasters are local.
It is not a question of whether or not or C.D.C. or local group or state
are trying to reach the harder populations.
We're all trying to reach them.
From the C.D.C. perspective, we have direct connects to -- connections
to a lot of state and local health departments, so we will share
information they can share through their channels, but if we have direct
channels.
For example, I can share information with the Salvation Army who is
share the information who just experienced a flood and they are
disconnected or they might have something printable, if we have that
direct able, we will use it because it is a situation where the
communication to save lives is what is most important, so it is not a
question of either/or.
We're working all channels at once.
>> Lisa: Excellent.
Thank you.
As I offer the next question, I will let you know because it pertains to
my work as well, I'm happy to chime in.
I know it is hard as a government agency to gain the trust of
undocumented residents, what techniques do you recommend for
communicating with them?
Jonathan Lynch: I'm going to defer to Lisa for this, but I'm going to
make one quick comment.
Sometimes people see government as a monolithic entity, but it is
several organizations under one umbrella.
It may be possible to build some trust for one part of government even
if people have perhaps an intense distrust for government as a whole and
I'm going to defer to Lisa.
>> Lisa: Thank you very much, Jonathan.
I want to affirm what Jonathan said and on EPIC, we work as a team to
get information to our partners.
We have a provide variety of partners, but what we have heard time and
again the trust-building relationship.
The people who are active in the communities who are the trusted
messengers, they can connect to community member, including undocumented
residents to get the necessities out -- get the messages out.
As a large government agency, we do not have the ability to connect well
with every community across the nation.
We do work closely with our partners, especially to find out whether
there are communities not being reached, whether there are questions not
being answered and we do best to be responsive to those.
Jonathan Lynch: It helps, too, that if we create a message in a document
and we pass that on to a partner organization and they take that mess
edge and they pass it to the constituents, it is communication coming
from an organization that the target audience already trusts.
The helps a lot.
I mean they can believe a message even though they don't trust the
government as a whole.
>> Lisa: I will add to that, too, the value of communication that is
concept that you will see reiterated with CERC and we will share the
link at the end of the webinar.
If we share a message with our partners and that message is consistent
with other partner, people in the community will get the same, accurate
meaningful response from multiple places and they are going to find they
can trust the message better.
Jonathan Lynch: Excellent.
Next question.
>> Lisa: Frank says he is active in his community in New York, but often
feels there is not enough -- forgive my paraphrasing, there is not
enough follow-up and he is looking for tips for more active engagement
with partners.
Jonathan Lynch: It is not something you do by happenstance.
It is something you plan out.
You don't say let's try this or try that.
It is something you actually have to make a plan for and execute.
One of the things we did with our partners was Luke a plan to reach out
to reach out a planned set of questions to verify they are connected and
see if we are serving them in the ways they need.
We had to go to a lot of trouble.
Federal Government has the paperwork reduction act.
We can't just poll people.
We have to get permission to do that.
We went through the trouble of doing that because it is worth taking the
time to do that.
Make a plan, incorporate shared activities, things you can do together,
incorporate a lot of preparedness.
Activities because it builds the trust before the emergency comes and
finally, if you have a communication channel, talk about your partners
on your communication channel that makes you look good.
It makes them look good and it is beneficial across the board, OK?
>> Lisa: Our next question, can you provide more information on what a
just in time partnership is and how you incorporate them into your
planning and preparedness effort?
Jonathan Lynch: You can't anticipate everything.
You wouldn't have the time to form 2,000 or 3,000 partnerships, so when
something unexpected comes, such as having to work on Ebola outbreak in
the democratic republic of the Congo, you have to find partners who
serve the population that you have never connected with before.
The most important factor, you don't know if they trust you, the most
important factor is for you to have a great reputation.
If you have a great reputation and when you numb and talk to them, you
are less likely to meet resistance.
If it is helpful, it is to form a partnership with a single member or
few members in a range of organizations that you want to serve and that
person can help promote your efforts.
We were very fortunate in the case of DRC to have a staff member from
DRC to have connections already that was just a blessing, so that kind
of luck won't always happen, but you can form the intermediate kind of
relationships to quickly establish trust in a larger set of
partnerships.
>> Lisa: Our next question, what modalities are most effective in
communicating with partners?
Do you use driving them towards websites?
Jonathan Lynch: Well, I personally, I prefer to share an e-mail rather
than drive them to a website.
If they have an e-mail, it is one click away to pass it to someone else,
so if I have the information already there, it is easy to pass on.
People may or may not click a clink, it is great if people check out
what you have, but I personally prefer to have it in front of their
face.
That is the great thing about social media, too, if you're connected on
social media or Twitter or linked in and you post something, they can
immediately post your posting, repeat their posting on their channels.
>> Lisa: I will add to that, that is one of the places that the cultural
considerations come into play.
You need to consider, how would your partners like to receive
information, but how would people they serve like to receive information
and make it as shareable as possible.
Jonathan Lynch: I talk about how e-mail is convenient, but you have to
look at the practicalities of the situation.
I mean sometimes you may have to print documents out and hand them out
at a grocery store.
We have had to do that multiple times sometimes you have to rely on a
type of word of mouth.
If you're working with an organization that serves people in assisted
homes, they might be experiencing decline or other disabilities, so the
method of communication may be you share a document with them and they
interpret and read the document and simplify and explain to the target
population.
Selecting the modality depends on a lot of factors, but the one I find
reduces, seems to maximize while passing on reducing corruption so
e-mail is my personal preference.
>> Lisa: I know it is difficult to measure success, but what metrics
have you tried to demonstrate your partnerships are having an impact?
Jonathan Lynch: Main things, one, they let us know.
They reach back and let us know.
I would caution against relying purely on numbers because it may be hard
to get an exact, precise number, but it is still meaningful to have a
partner write back and say I share this through our network.
We appreciate this.
Secondly, there is a whole science around monitoring media, social media
even monitoring discussion groups on forums, so if you have some
electronic means by which the targeted population communicates, you can
monitor that and get meaningful numbers from doing that.
It helps if you have someone who is embedded, who can get a general
sense of how your information has been received.
We have a whole research team that tries to provide this type of
information.
The point that makes it difficult is, was it your partnership
communication that was successful or was it is the communication through
mainstream media that was successful?
This is a difficulty in all marketing efforts that you use multiple
points to reach people to persuade them to do something and you don't
know which of the points influenced the outcome, but you can observe to
see if you did influence the outcome.
>> Lisa: Our next question is what is an expected turnaround time in
providing information to partners?
Is there a best practice or does it depend on the case?
Do you commit to providing updates on a schedule whether or not there is
new information?
Jonathan Lynch: Certainly, it does depend, but as far as the schedule
goes, if you have an event that is changing on a regular basis, if
nothing else, you can provide updates on case counts, things like that.
It would be questionable to provide an update that says nothing is
happening, but -- I'm trying to think about how to word this.
We want to keep our partners as informed as we can and so we will make
regular contact, try not to go more than a few weeks to make sure we are
sharing something to communicate with the EPIC partner, we do that, so
even if it is not on a prescribed schedule, we make sure they are
well-informed because they expect it from us.
It is almost like breaking trust if we don't provide something on a
semi-regular basis.
Lisa, what are your thoughts?
>> Lisa: I would like to add to that one of the basic ideas of CERC,
when you're looking information, you want to upinvestigate people with
the information that you do, so you can take the opportunity to tell
people what you do know, what you don't know and what you're doing to
find out, so updating on a schedule, that is certainly on a case by case
basis, but as promptly as you're able to and proactively as you're able
to even if the information you're providing is here is what we're going
to find out.
Jonathan Lynch: That is one phenomenon that we discuss in CERC, people
believe the worst information.
Even if you have a little bit of information, share it right away and
people tend to trust you.
Next question.
>> Lisa: We have time for a few more.
Next question is do you have any tips on how to figure out all of the
different groups, organizations that you should be reaching out to, for
instance trying to reach agencies that serve vulnerable populations?
How do you build that contact list?
Jonathan Lynch: First, you need -- follow the five steps I described,
you need to segment your audience.
When you say reaching vulnerable populations that means a lot of things.
You need to define what that means, older adults a vulnerable
population?
Are older adults in nursing homes or assistants homes, a vulnerable
population?
If so, maybe you want to get online and find an organization that serves
that industry.
EPIC does have such a partner.
It is a question of figuring out who you need to reach and what
organizations can help you reach those groups and then doing the work to
establish that connection.
>> Lisa: I will add to that, as part of the all hazards planning, you
will take into consideration what sort of risks are my community like to
face and from there that might inform your decisions about which groups
might be at greater risks and, therefore, finding organizations that
serve those groups.
Jonathan Lynch: Don't put it off.
Do it now.
>> Lisa: The question about how to build the contact list, sometimes web
search is the best way, sometimes connecting through other partners is a
good way to do it, whether that is internal or external partners that
might have the connections or people that are in your community or
outside of your organization that might help you find the right
connections.
Jonathan Lynch: The great thing about a web search if an organization
is -- has enough resources to be a helpful partner they probably have a
website presence.
Then, of course, partners or people you work with say hey, go check this
out and you can learn about them before you reach out to them.
We have been in a situation where we're considering forming a
partnership.
We have a meeting and we're like, well, I'm not sure if this is a good
match for both of us, so that can be awkward, so doing your research
ahead of time online is a good idea.
>> Lisa: Excellent.
Thank you.
Could you please expound on nurturing relationships and tips to improve
that process?
Jonathan Lynch: We talk about nurturing relationships, there is building
the relationship and repairing any damage that may have been done.
In terms of billing the relationship, it is about establishing regular,
meaningful, activities.
It helps to be a personable person, when you do that.
In materials of repairing damage to a relationship, I cannot emphasize
enough that methodologies and conflict resolution can have incredible
results.
I have used the methodologies to prevent some pretty, what would be
otherwise a failed situation.
It can make a difference.
I personally, if you want good, street-level conflict resolution there
is a book called "getting to yes."
It is fantastic and it is kind of the basics, but what folks in our
situation would be most likely to use.
OK?
Any other questions?
>> Lisa: How would you manage lone rogue people who are disseminating
incomplete or incorrect information?
Jonathan Lynch: I would not want to work with them, my goodness.
Is it that they are sharing their own information that conflicts with
your organization, because if that is the case, I would say discontinue
that.
Entirely.
That is not hard to do, explain to them, it sounds like we're coming at
this from different angles and is a concern for us, so we're going to
discontinue this communication.
They might be a great communication partner, but they have some other
aspect that they are doing that creates a difficult any for you and in
that situation, you have to weigh out the political concerns versus the
public health concerns and that can be prominent if you're dealing with
a faith organization whose faith may be in conflict with your
organization's own standards.
It has been our experience that people are more concerned about saving
lives and much less concerned about your own reputation.
OK.
>> Lisa: I believe that may be all of the time we have for questions.
If we did not get to your question, we apologize, but encourage you to
send it to EPIC@CDC.gov.
Thank you.
Jonathan Lynch: Thank you, everyone.
>> Kellee: Thank you again from me and the entire team for joining us
for today's webinar.
If you have additional questions e-mail them and today's presentation
has been recorded.
Feel free to share it with anyone who wasn't able to attend.
You can earn continuing education for your attendance, please follow the
instructions found on CDC.GOV/EPIC and the access code is EPIC 0219 with
all letters capitalized.
Thanks again, everyone.
Goodbye.
Jonathan Lynch: Goodbye.