SPOTLIGHT ON NEHA RESOURCES: WORKFORCE OUTREACH TOOLKIT
• Talking With Decision-Makers: Helping decision-makers understand why your work matters is imperative to boosting the impact of your environmental health work. Decision-mak- ers are usually not scientists, which means it is up to you to translate your science into information that helps them inte- grate environmental health into the policies, standards, and laws they write. • Writing an Elevator Pitch: An elevator pitch is a short, 30-sec- ond speech to introduce a topic. The goal is to quickly capture the attention of your listener and get your message across clearly. An elevator pitch is useful to persuade decision-makers, elected officials, and partners. It can be used to network, in a job inter- view, or to pitch an idea. • Talking to the Media: Talking to the media can help get envi- ronmental health messages of health, safety, and equity to your community. Input from experts such as yourself raises the visibility of the expertise of environmental health profes- sionals. You can use these tips to improve how you commu- nicate your messages to the media to protect the health and safety of your communities. • Selecting Images: Effective use of images is a great way to com- municate your message. Our brain processes visuals 60,000
times faster than text. If you removed all of the text in your mes- sage, what story would your images tell? You can learn how to consider quality, relatability, representation, and relevance when selecting images for your environmental health messages. Learn more and download all these resources at www.neha.org/ workforce-outreach-toolkit.
43
October 2024 • Journal of Environmental Health
Powered by FlippingBook