The fantastic Public Health Communications Collaborative recently released Overcoming Challenges & Leveraging Strengths, an action guide looking at what makes public health communications programs effective. The authors examined the broad conditions that shape communications inside public health agencies. Through interviews and analysis, they identified fourteen organizational factors that influence how well communications teams function.
Many of these factors will sound familiar to communicators—things like leadership support, adequate resources, and strong relationships. But one that is becoming increasingly critical is technological sophistication.
The report suggests that communications teams will need to understand and manage emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, to be effective. In practice, that means more than just having access to tools like ChatGPT and Claude. Communicators need to understand where these tools can fit into their everyday work.
AI is most useful when it supports the core tasks that communications teams already manage:
1. Translating complex science into clear language
One of the core responsibilities of public health communicators is translating complex scientific and medical information into language the public can understand.
AI can help with tasks like:
- simplifying dense scientific explanations
- rewriting technical paragraphs in plain language
- identifying jargon and suggesting alternatives
- generating short summaries of complex topics. This can be especially helpful for agencies that publish consumer health information, technical guidance, or research summaries.
Of course, the communicator is still essential. Someone still has to make sure explanations are accurate, relevant for the audience, and aligned with agency guidance.
2. Repurposing content across multiple channels
Public health communicators rarely create a message just once. A single announcement or report may need to become a web page, a series of social media posts, a newsletter article, talking points, and a press release.
AI can help draft those adaptations. It can take the key information and quickly reshape it for different formats, which reduces the time it takes to adjust a message to be effective for multiple channels.
3. Summarizing research, reports, and policy documents
Communications teams are often asked to absorb large amounts of information from program staff, researchers, or leadership. In some agencies, communicators also develop messaging from large research portfolios and complex policy documents.
AI tools can help by:
- summarizing long research papers
- extracting key points from technical reports
- identifying major themes in multiple documents
- generating short summaries for internal use
This doesn’t replace careful reading. But it can help communicators orient themselves more quickly before developing public-facing materials.
4. Supporting rapid-response communication
Public health agencies often need to respond quickly during emerging situations like outbreaks, environmental events, policy announcements, or new guidance.
AI tools can help communicators:
- organize evolving information
- generate draft messaging for review
- prepare preliminary Q&A documents
- summarize updates for internal teams
Those drafts still need to go through the usual editorial and scientific review process. But AI can help teams develop structured materials more quickly in time-sensitive situations.
5. Maintaining consistency with agency voice and approved messaging
Public health communicators don’t just create clear messages. They also have to make sure those messages reflect the agency’s voice, mission, and previously approved language.
AI can help support editorial consistency by:
- reviewing drafts for voice and tone
- identifying language that diverges from established messaging
- suggesting revisions that better align with the agency’s communication style
This can be particularly useful in large organizations where multiple teams or partners are producing materials for many programs and channels.
AI suggestions still need human review. But the tools can make it easier to maintain consistency when dealing with a large and complex body of public health information.
Putting AI in context
These examples are just a starting point. As AI tools become more integrated into public health communications, teams will discover new ways to make their messages more efficient and effective.
None of these uses represent a fundamentally new kind of work. They support the same activities public health communicators do all the time. AI may help generate drafts or organize information, but communicators still interpret the science and ensure that information is accurate and appropriate for the audience.
And AI doesn’t change the mission of public health communication: to help people find, understand, and use information to protect and improve their health.