Health sanitarian skills for your resume and career

Like other fields, possessing excellent writing and oral skills in health and wellness is critical to effectively convey health information to audiences. Those skills appear to be waning even among graduate students. Recognizing low competency and getting remedial help with language mechanics should be a top priority.

Also, taking the time and effort to get to know your audience profile before engaging with them ensures that you are writing and speaking at their level of understanding and readiness to hear you. Tailoring information to audiences when planning to deliver health education or health promotion is a critical necessity - we cannot assume that everyone who would benefit from hearing the health or wellness information we want to provide can understand it or are even interested.

Perhaps more critical today is recognizing and combating the formidable power of health misinformation to sabotage the health and well-being of the public and, conversely, provide credible, evidence-based information. Clearly, if the vast majority of our population had consistently accessed factual news and information based on sound scientific principles about the nature and spread of the virus and the necessity of public health guidelines, no matter how imperfectly guidelines evolved, we would likely be living in a scenario of recovery from the pandemic rather than continuing to watch case numbers and deaths rise across the country with a more contagious variant.

As increasingly reported, misinformation spreads much more quickly than factual information. A study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published in the prestigious Science journal compared the diffusion of verified true and false news articles that appeared on Twitter from 2006 through 2017 (Vosoughi, Roy, Aral, 2018). They found that false articles diffused significantly 'farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than factual articles in all information categories. The reason? Researchers concluded that false information was more novel and engaged more emotional reactions like fear, disgust, and surprise than factual information. Thus it was more likely shared with friends and family. Unfortunately, those who disseminate misinformation for whatever reason are increasing, and there are currently no regulations that require news and information to be fact-checked and truthful. Health and wellness experts then have a responsibility to recommend therapies with evidence of efficacy and safety, disseminate accurate information from responsible government, education, and health organizational sites, and provide guidelines to help the public discern what health resources provide accurate information.

The consequences of not tackling health misinformation can obviously have grim consequences. We have all watched as misinformation on vaccination has negatively impacted the country's response to the pandemic. It is a fact that vaccination is one of the great modern triumphs against serious widespread infectious disease, along with antibiotics and proper hygiene. But misinformation and disinformation in social media as well as in certain national media websites and broadcasts has cast doubt on vaccine efficacy and safety and has politicized public health guidelines, leading to a substantial proportion of the population refusing vaccination rather than viewing it as a most fortunate solution and moving towards herd immunity. Even before the pandemic, misinformation about vaccines, in general, had been rising, and infectious diseases formerly conquered, like measles, began to reappear and put children at risk.

Another important skill I would mention that health and wellness graduates should cultivate is an ability to forge caring relationships with individuals or groups based on trust and ethics to inspire confidence in their expertise. It is important to realize that one's ability to reach and persuade people they want to help is largely dependent on whether those people respect and trust them. Health and wellness experts should be involved in their community and demonstrate empathy and concern beyond merely providing credible health and wellness information from reputable resources.