From the friendly messages on social media, important updates to the pubic, to liaising between CK Public Health and media, the newly created “COVID-19 Communications Team” at CK Public Health is behind it!
Caress, with her daughter Willa (born June 6, 2020) at home!
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the communications team consisted of one (1) person: the Public Relations Officer. The newly created COVID-19 Communications Team provides support to our Public Relations Officer, while bringing valuable skills and perspectives to crisis communication. Our COVID-19 Communications Team includes a: Public Relations Officer, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Planning & Evaluation Specialist, Public Health Nurse and Program Assistant.
Since the very early days of COVID-19, we’ve been dedicated to keeping the community accurately informed and we’ve been committed to making sure that information is being shared quickly, as time is not a luxury we have during this pandemic.
When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, our Public Relations Officer, Caress took the lead in creating an action plan on communicating to the public quickly and setting the standard for corporate communications during a crisis. We manage social media accounts, write media releases, create and maintain our COVID-19 website, answer your questions online and on the phone, work with media, create materials and documents, support other departments with important public health information and much more!
Let’s meet our team!
“In the beginning, it felt very much like trying to build a plane while flying it. Everything was changing at a rapid pace,” says Caress. When Caress took maternity leave in June, the new Public Relations Officer, Stephanie continued the action plan on ensuring quality communication to the community of Chatham-Kent.
Stephanie responding to media inquiries!
“3 months in (to the pandemic), communication is starting to look a bit different. Now, we are in the phase of reopening the community and focusing on safety around these openings,” says Stephanie.
Rebecca working on planning messaging at her desk!
Communication through social media is a large part of getting out information fast! When messaging our social media on a weekend or evening, Jeff, our Youth Engagement Coordinator is usually the friendly reply back to you and ensures that you will have your question answered.
“Doing fast paced engagement around harm reduction in youth, moving into this role during an emergency was a good fit and I assist in reaching different demographics,” says Jeff.
Behind the scenes, our Planning and Evaluation Specialist, Rebecca supports the team by looking at where to focus information on.
“The work on the communication team gave me a chance to apply my knowledge on strategy and health equity to target our messages and think about how we could best get our messages out to those groups,” says Rebecca.
Jeff taking a break from social media!
Jordynne is a Public Health Nurse on our Chronic Disease & Well Being Team, and has been providing support by bringing a nursing perspective to the team.
“When I think about nursing, I think about collaboration across public health teams and with our community partners to ensure our messaging is accurate and easy to understand, incorporates diverse perspectives, and is relevant to any issues the community is experiencing,” says Jordynne.
Lynnly, Program Assistant helps out the team by providing administrative support, such as with graphics and letting us know of interesting initiatives occurring at other health units, related to COVID-19. Lynnly is an asset to our team, as she is the Program Assistant for our Chronic Disease & Well Being Team
Lynnly providing us with administrative support!
We value the importance of ensuring that specific populations are not left in the dark when it comes to informing the community. We have taken on a number of different projects and campaigns and have developed a number of different products that speak directly to children, to people with differing abilities, to older adults and seniors, to residents who do not speak English as a first language, and so on. Always, but especially during a public health pandemic, it is so important that the entire community is being reached in a way that is easily accessible to them.
Jordynne working from her home office!
Working in an organization that has a “people first” mission, we are there for you to answer your questions, comments and provide you with resources during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are very thankful for everyone in our community that continues to support us during this hard time – we could not do it without you!