In order for the client's relationship with the media to be optimized, the communication professional must first of all know the routines of the stakeholders, the different publications, the environment in which they operate, their specificities and the structure for selecting the news. 
The communication professional must be aware of the information of importance to readers and its news factor, but, he must also be aware of what is news-value for the media. 

The advisor must share the stakeholders' sense of news value, which is an important factor in the information selection process on the part of the stakeholders and which will allow for greater preparation and adaptation of strategies for greater permeability to their information in the media.

The information issued by the communication professionals, communication agencies, institutions, companies, news agencies, and all other actors looking for space in the media, reach the newsrooms of the media in abundance and constantly, so there is an unavoidable selection among the information to be worked on and published and that which is postponed or deleted.

01

Establish a coordination mechanism

A communication coordination mechanism (e.g. a communication working group) should be established to help plan communication on a routine basis. The group will also prove its worth in any emerging crisis, as it will facilitate a rapid and well-coordinated response.
Consider the following
· Work together in the group to ensure strong routine communication and aligned messaging.
· Share information regularly, via emails and face-to-face meetings.
· Agree on who will be involved in coordinating communications in case of a crisis, your roles, and responsibilities and how you will coordinate and share information in a crisis.
· Share information regularly, via emails, and/ or face-to-face meetings.

02

Strengthen your organization

In building and maintaining trust in vaccination, you need to develop, implement, and widely share communication strategies and plans and train your staff. A strong organization will also help you respond to any possible crisis.
Consider the following
· Develop communication and crisis communication plans.
· Ensure senior management engagement and approval of plans.
· Prepare holding statements for use in a crisis.
· Train spokespersons and establish relations with the media.
· Train frontline health workers in vaccination safety and interpersonal communication.

03

Build relations

Good stakeholder relations are critical to building and maintaining trust. Stakeholders can become strong advocates and may have knowledge of and access to key population groups. Who they depend on the context,
but may include national authorities, experts, opinion leaders, health workers, professional associations, community leaders, the public, and the media.
Consider the following
· Engage them in disseminating information and developing communication plans.
· Form strategic relationships with stakeholders with access to your priority target groups.
· Work with the media
to gain their trust and increase their knowledge of immunization.
· Be visible to increase public knowledge of immunization and trust in your spokespersons.

04

Build population resilience

To ensure public trust ongoing communications need to be implemented to build awareness and knowledge of risks and benefits.
Consider the following
· Conduct research to gain a deeper understanding of key population groups and to test communication products and messages.
· Monitor public opinion on immunization, e.g. through social media monitoring or feedback from frontline health workers.
· Ensure information for key public target groups and job aids for health workers based on the insights gained from your research and monitoring.

05

Gather your inner circle

Coordination is critical during all phases of crisis response. If it is believed that the event may damage trust in vaccines and cause a negative media response, your inner circle of allies should be gathered immediately.
Consider the following
· Establish a coordination and working group (if not
already established).
· Engage relevant partners across institutions, e.g. ministries of health, education, and social affairs; regulatory authorities; centers for disease control, health promotion, communication, press, and emergency response; vaccine experts; professional associations.
· Agree how you will continue to coordinate, communicate, and share information within the group.
· Agree on roles and responsibilities.

06

Understand the problem

Not all events that may potentially erode confidence in vaccines and vaccination require a communications response. Not responding may impair trust in vaccines and health authorities. Over-communicating may cause unnecessary public concern. Thus, it is important – throughout the process
– to analyze events and plan the communications response accordingly.
Consider the following
· Obtain as much information as possible about the event(s) that took place.
· Analyse the situation: what is the potential
level of impact on trust
in vaccines and the immunization program?
· Shape your communications response according to your conclusions.

07

Liase with key stakeholders

A critical first step in such events is to liaise with key stakeholders. Good stakeholder relations are critical to ensuring trust during a crisis.
Consider the following
· Consult your list of key stakeholders.
· Liaise with stakeholders to benefit from the support of advocates.
· Share information with stakeholders to avoid confusion and distrust and to avoid any negative interference from adversaries.

08

Communicate externally

The right response may limit the negative consequences of the crisis or even prevent the situation from escalating into a crisis. Honest and open communication is crucial for maintaining and building trust.
Consider the following
· Decide whether the event warrants external communication and plan your response based on your analysis of the event.
· Revisit your crisis communication plan
and prepare a plan for external communication.
· Communicate broadly and to selected target groups; communicate often using consistent messages through many channels.
· Communicate where there are uncertainties and what you are doing to reduce them.

The information conveyed by the media must meet the needs and expectations of citizens. It is through the way they recreate and disseminate the reality that social processes develop.

Media coverage by the press affects the way the citizen understands the world, it models the formation of opinions and influences subjective conceptions of reality.

If we consider the number of users, Facebook is today the 4th largest country in the world. Information is shared, commented on, reproduced very easily.

On the one hand, this situation gives citizens a voice in the media, allowing them to better choose the subjects that interest them, thus fulfilling their informational expectations.

On the other hand, citizens will demand greater transparency, rigor, and quality from all social structures.

Institutions have to adapt to this process, otherwise, they will lose their citizens and lose credibility and competitiveness.

01

Anticipation

Effective and whenever possible.

02

Information Quality

The information must be accurate, dynamic and reassuring.

03

Agility

The first 24 hours are decisive.

04

Veracity

Lying is suicide.

The task of leading during a sustained crisis—whether you are the CEO of a major corporation or a manager heading up an impromptu company initiative— is treacherous. Crisis leadership has two distinct phases. First is the emergency phase, when your task is to stabilize the situation and buy time. The second is the adaptive phase when you tackle the underlying causes of the crisis and build the capacity to thrive in a new reality.

The adaptive phase is especially tricky: People put enormous pressure on you to respond to their anxieties with authoritative certainty, even if doing so means overselling what you know and discounting what you don’t. As you ask them to make necessary but uncomfortable adaptive changes in their behavior or work, they may try to bring you down. People clamor for direction, while you are faced with a way forward that isn’t at all obvious. Twists and turns are the only certainties.

Real-time responsive thinking

This is just one example of the responsive thinking we’ve been working on in real-time alongside our clients. Rather than ethereal advice, we’ve created and implemented an internal framework designed to transform business problems into tactical, tangible creative solutions.

We’re working to evaluate our stakeholders’ needs—and formulate actions—across the following tasks:

01

Regain Your Balance

Immediate optimizations and actions to create a clear picture of the situation, stem losses and eliminate waste, such as an “urgent/mediatic" media and measurement scenario plan.

02

Defend Your Core

Critical changes and initiatives are necessary to protect your core business in the short term and continue to deliver on your value proposition.

03

Join the Fight

Proactive, business-adjacent communications, actions, and programs designed to support your customers, employees, communities, and environment, continues to take their toll.

04

Prepare for the Future

Begin the resource-intensive, company-wide initiatives that will be necessary to adapt your business and brand to the new normal and fortify itself against future threats of this nature.

05

Strengthen your stability

We took immediate action to ensure messaging, media placement, and targeting was adjusted to minimize risk. From there, we worked to ensure a flexible media and creative plan was put in place, which is governed by a robust, weekly measurement plan that tracks the shifts in business.

06

Enjoy

And learn. Always learning.

The need for effective health communication is growing. Today, both public and private institutions are using the internet and other technologies to speed the delivery of health information.

However, for people with limited reading or technical skills, this can pose a challenge. That’s why it’s so important for public health professionals to become well versed in the creation and delivery of consumer health communications.

Those who grasp the nuances of health communication can provide a valuable service in settings ranging from private consulting firms to large governmental agencies.

01

Adherence

Adherence refers to how much a person’s behavior aligns with their health care provider’s recommendations. This might involve taking prescribed medications, making certain lifestyle changes, or following a particular diet. A patient’s willingness to begin and adhere to treatment recommendations is vital to their health improvement, and an individual’s inclination or ability to adhere to healthy behaviors can influence their long-term health. Factors that impact a person’s adherence include finances (e.g., ability to pay for medication), the presence or lack of physical symptoms, and the quality of the patient-provider relationship.

02

Advocacy

Public health advocacy describes efforts to promote positive changes that will benefit the health of a community or population. These changes might be brought about by policy or regulation changes or simply by raising awareness. In some instances, advocacy is proactive while in others it is a response to an event or issue. Advocacy organizations such as the American Public Health Association collaborate with key stakeholders to help create public policy that addresses today’s critical health concerns. Activities might include protecting program funding, reducing health disparities, and ensuring equitable access to health care services.

03

Audience

When it comes to health communication, understanding your audience — the people who will hear or read your message — is important. Knowing their needs wants, habits, lifestyles, and motivations enable you to tailor content accordingly and utilize channels that give you the best chance of reaching them. Targeted health communications deliver your key message more effectively and are more likely to influence behavioral change.

04

Awareness

Health awareness refers to individual or community knowledge of pressing health issues, such as preventing obesity. By educating the public on a specific health topic, an awareness campaign can help promote healthier behaviors that can, in turn, improve health outcomes. For instance, in 2018, the CDC launched its “Tips From Former Smokers” campaign to raise awareness of the negative impact of smoking and secondhand smoke. An estimated 1.6 million smokers attempted to quit smoking following the campaign’s launch.

05

Campaign

Campaigns involve focusing on a specific promotional strategy to influence knowledge, behaviors, attitudes, or policy in a targeted audience. For example, a stop-smoking campaign can help reduce the negative impact of cigarette smoking by raising awareness of its risks, debunking myths and misconceptions, and promoting healthier behaviors. The success of a campaign often depends on a highly organized process that involves planning, implementation, and evaluation.

06

Community-centered prevention

This approach is designed to reduce the risk for common health conditions within a single community or setting (e.g., a school or neighborhood), including obesity, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Strategies for community-centered prevention might include procurement policy changes, programs, and policies that address healthier behaviors, and the development and implementation of wellness initiatives. To be successful, these efforts must be comprehensive, integrated, and tailored to meet the needs of a specific population.

07

Cultural competence

Given the need for health care systems to manage increasingly diverse patient populations, cultural competence — or cultural respect and understanding — has become a health care priority. It refers to the ability of providers to deliver services that respect and acknowledge the health practices, beliefs, and linguistic and cultural needs of diverse patient groups. Efforts to improve providers’ cultural competence can help reduce health disparities External link and make high-quality care accessible to more people.

08

Disparities

In terms of health care, the word “disparities” refers to differences in the availability of or access to health care services and facilities across various populations. This is not to be confused with health status disparities, which describes differences in disease rates, deaths, and suffering across various population groups. These groups may be defined by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or other attributes.

09

Ecological model of health

An ecological approach to health identifies various environmental factors that affect individual behavior. These variables may include the physical location, individual attitudes, and beliefs, public policy, organizational or social climate, or attributes of the surrounding community Because of the complex interactions that exist within a particular environment, health interventions that address a range of variables are likely to be more successful. The ecological model can be valuable in health program planning since it can help determine the appropriate timing, focus, and extent of intervention.

10

Health communication

In conjunction with health information technology — the variety of technologies used to store, share and analyze health information — health communication involves the processes used by the public and professionals to search for, comprehend and apply health information. By facilitating the meaningful exchange and use of health-related information, effective health communication can have a positive impact on health care, outcomes, and equity.

11

Health literacy

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, Title V, describes health literacy as a person’s ability to make smart decisions about their health by obtaining, communicating and understanding basic information about health and related services. A person’s health literacy may be influenced by a variety of factors including culture, personal communication skills, and knowledge of health topics. It can impact one’s ability to practice self-care and chronic disease management, choose between health insurance or drug prescription plans or share personal health information with providers.

12

Health promotion

According to the World Health Organization, health promotion is the process of empowering people to gain better control over — and consequently improve — their health. This process goes beyond individual behavior to encompass an array of social and environmental interventions. Health promotion programs strive to enable individuals and communities to reduce the risk of chronic and infectious diseases and other conditions by adopting healthier lifestyles. These programs frequently address the impact of social determinants of health, which include the physical environment, socioeconomic factors, and education.

13

Intervention

This is a multifaceted integration of strategies or programs designed to improve health status or influence positive behavioral changes. Interventions can be applied to an individual or within an entire group or population (e.g., a town, workplace, or school). An intervention may take the form of new policies, outreach efforts, promotional campaigns, or awareness programs. Some examples of a community-based intervention include programs aimed at reducing high-risk drinking among certain age groups as well as initiatives that seek to overcome barriers to immunization.

14

Risk communication

This refers to the exchange of health risk-related information among various stakeholders, including the government, corporations, the media, scientists, unions, and the public. Risk communication involves informing people about potential dangers (e.g., natural disasters and severe weather or threats to human health, such as disease outbreaks). Communications may be written, verbal or visual and often include tips on reducing risk. Ideally, risk communication involves a two-way dialogue.

15

Social marketing

The International Social Marketing Association defines social marketing as seeking to “develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good.” This practice is based on ethical principles and uses best practices, research, and other resources to design effective, sustainable social change programs. One example of a health care social marketing program is a campaign that promotes awareness about the benefits of breastfeeding among mothers, providers, and the general public.