This assignment was part of the course MPH 632 Environmental and Occupational Health Risk Assessment, and it was the course’s ninth assignment of the semester. It was a group project focusing on risk communication, and my group’s topic was Climate Change. It was a two-part project, with each part below (taken directly from the course syllabus):

Part 1

Each group will conduct a town hall meeting, where one person in the group is the director of public health for a city in the USA, one person is a healthcare provider and director of that city’s hospital, and the other person will serve as the Mayor of that city. Your classmates from the other groups will serve as members of the general public and the instructor will serve as a reporter. You must be prepared to answer questions using good risk communication practices. It is strongly suggested that you message map your potential answers to expected questions. The instructor will utilize questions that have been asked on these topics during real press conferences held in the past (so you can google them and review to see potential questions, please note that you will likely see some good examples of proper risk communication and some really bad examples where the risk communication was absolutely terrible). First, each person in your group will be asked to make a 60-second opening statement. Next, questions will be asked and concise answers will be expected. The total length of time will be approximately 20 minutes for each group. Your grade will be based on your ability to utilize good risk communication practices in your opening statement and in your response to questions from the “reporter” and the “public”. 

Part 2

Please write a concise one-page reflection of your experience during class giving this public health town hall meeting. Email this reflection summary to the instructor: Include answers in your reflection summary to the following questions: -List the topic that you chose to address for your town hall meeting. -What was/were your main take-home message(s)? -Were you able to communicate your take-home messages successfully? Why or why not? -What did you feel were the biggest challenges and toughest aspects of this assignment? -What could you personally improve about your performance? -What did your group do well and how could your group improve its performance? -What advice would you give to a colleague as they prepare to participate in a public town hall meeting on a controversial topic? 

Going into this project, my group knew our topic would center around climate change in a coastal city, but we were not presented with a specific scenario until five minutes before the presentation. Our scenario was a California wildfire brought on by faulty power lines. My partners and I then had five minutes to get together to discuss the situation and come up with a game plan. I was playing the role of the hospital director, and my group decided to focus on the message that climate change affects wildfires and to instruct the public to stay calm and listen. This assignment tested our ability to think critically with a time crunch along with answering questions in real-time. We made it our goal to focus on not contradicting each other, and we succeeded with that. This experience is directly related to the field of public health, as professionals need to react to situations as they happen. Having learned from this experience, I would be sure to talk directly to the people and tell them what power they have in a situation if I were handling a crisis scenario in the future. The below PDF is the write-up I prepared following this assignment.

Practice-Lab-2_Jacqueline-Williams