Health Communications Challenge: Lessons from Coronavirus

The W.H.O. dubbed it an “infodemic”: early in the pandemic, we were deluged by communications—some reliable, some misinformation, some just well-intentioned but wrong. What have we learned? Our panel will discuss health communication during the pandemic through three lenses: the efforts of public health professionals to provide accurate, timely, and useful information, how the news media’s coverage shifted over time, and the thinking behind the new BU student-to-student campaign “F*ck It Don’t Cut It.” Panelists: Leslie Friday (COM ‘07), director of content, Partners in Health; Dr. Lei Guo, assistant professor, Emerging Media Studies; and Hannah Schweitzer (COM ‘YR), AdLab president, and Emmanuel Reid (COM ‘20), apprentice for Prosek Partners, a financial communications firm in Boston. Dean Mariette DiChristina (COM ’86) will moderate.

When 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm on Wednesday, September 9, 2020