Did you HEAR me?

Hearing vs. listening was an often emphasized concept in my household when I was a kid. . .probably because my brother and my feigned deafness when it came to following rules left them concerned that we were incapable of either; )

Listening simply means that the sound waves are received, but hearing means that the message contained registers and is understood. As public health practitioners, we want our messages to be not just received, but also understood--or heard. In module 2, understanding your target audience, we've learned that knowing who you are speaking (or writing, or blogging, or tweeting. . .) to is hugely important in constructing your message so that it is effectively heard by those we are trying to reach. As discussed in When Bad Presentations happen to Good Causes, regardless of how important your subject matter is, if you don't consider the audience's "level of interest, ability to absorb information, inclination to interact, and other factors, you may find your talk falling on deaf ears".

I also found the AMA article pretty interesting--how physicians connect with their patience has such a huge impact on compliance and patient outcomes. I thought this one was so good, that I passed it along to my brother, the new Dr. in the family. . .he could use a little help with the whole empathy thing. (Don't tell him I said that).

I was absent from class this week, and quite sad to miss the presentations--it sounds like they all went great! On the plus side, I had a very cool opportunity to give a presentation of my own last Tuesday--to several members of Congress! I was in D.C. lobbying for two bills very related to public health--PEP & PHIT. PEP is to increase funding for P.E. programs, and PHIT is an initiative that would allow workers to use their FLEX insurance dollars towards preventative care. The groups lobbying for these bills thought it would be cool to have athletes involved, which is how myself and other athletes like Herschell Walker, Kerry Walsh, & Tim Brown got the invite. Using the principles of segmentation and targeting vs. tailoring that we learned in class, they structured the meetings based around which sports the Congressmen & women were most interested in--(Representative Schmidt is not only a triathlete himself, but also has 4 aides that will be doing their first race this fall)! Depending on their voting history with the 2 bills, the presentation message was tailored accordingly. The easiest were the "thank you's" for those who we had their continued support; in that case, the rest of the visit was usually spent discussing running or triathlon training. . .ahh, government dollars at work; )

see you Tuesday!