MDHHS’s communication strategy is critically flawed

After working on the previous story all week, I have to say that I’m disappointed in the communications strategy at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. I don’t know who set the policy, so I can’t name any names, but the lack of communication from the state-level health authority is kind of stunning.

At a time when transparency is critical to maintaining the trust of the community, I expected MDHHS communications personnel to leap at the chance to speak to a local reporter for a chance to explain the science and the situation to their readers.

Pandemic information must be communicated in as many ways as possible, and frequently, if the message is going to reach people. The MDHHS is instead letting Governor Whitmer, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, and the local health departments shoulder nearly the entire weight of that load. And they just aren’t enough.

This week, I set out to answer a question I’ve heard repeatedly from people frustrated with orders from the governor and MDHHS. “Where’s the science?” I heard over and over. Almost a year into this fight, the communications department at MDHHS should be able to answer that question off the cuff, with no preparation. This should be an answer that they all had memorized a month into the pandemic.

While COVID-19 may be new, the science that backs up non-pharmaceutical interventions is not. Hand washing has a long history of saving lives from communicable disease, sanitizing surfaces is standard practice in food service to prevent disease spread, and wearing masks was a key factor in the fight against the SARS-CoV-1 virus in Asia, which was discovered more than 15 years ago. You can’t tell me there’s no science to support these things, just because SARS-CoV-2 is new.

I could perhaps understand this shortfall if it was just Late Edition being left in the cold, a small newsletter with an unknown reporter in a small, rural town. But a Google news search shows that the MDHHS communications staff has been fairly tight-lipped with all the major media, too. Rather than granting interviews, they’ve chosen to rely mostly on statements and press releases.

This is a fine way of getting information to officials and reporters, but it is not engaging to their audiences. It’s a treatment more often received from shadowy corporations and law enforcement agencies, not government departments supposedly focused on an informational outreach campaign.

Why a professional, state-level communications department, staffed with experienced individuals, would leave this critical messaging up to politicians, and local health departments with no dedicated communications staff, is beyond me.

The local health department is clearly already overworked, having released a statement in November announcing they could no longer keep up with contact tracing. And politicians, particularly in an election year, are going to be disbelieved by at least 1/3 of the population by default.

Getting the message of how to stay safe and reopen the economy faster should have been done by an small army of professional communicators talking to reporters about the importance of NPI’s as often and as loudly as possible from day 1. Nearly a year later, it is still being sent in a brief email nearly a week after an interview request.

MDHHS is bungling it.