The COVID-19 pandemic is the most significant public health emergency of our time, which has exacerbated existing health, racial, and social inequities and is likely to influence people’s health and well-being for many generations. This talk focuses on the lessons learned about communicating COVID-19. It will also discuss future directions for a community-driven, equity- and human rights-centered, and multi-sectoral approach to communication and public health interventions in pandemic and interpandemic settings.
Presented by Renata Schiavo, PhD, MA, CCL
Renata Schiavo, Ph.D., MA, CCL, is a global health practitioner and public health/social sciences academic who works at the intersection of public health, healthcare, health equity, and the social and structural determinants of health, human rights, health, and risk communication, social and behavior change (SBC), system-thinking, and social and behavior change communication (SBCC). She is a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, the Founder and Board President of Health Equity Initiative, a member-driven nonprofit membership organization, and a Principal at Strategies for Equity and Communication Impact (SECI), a global consultancy. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health and serves on the editorial board of Health Equity. Dr. Schiavo is the author of Health Communication: From Theory to Practice (Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley), now in its second edition, and has 65+ publications and 165+ scientific presentations. She is a passionate advocate for health, racial, and social equity and a committed voice to addressing barriers preventing people from leading healthy and productive lives. She is also a leading proponent and an established practitioner/researcher on developing community-driven and multi-sectoral solutions and partnerships to address health, equity, human rights, and communication issues. She has been working in the United States and several countries in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Eastern Asia.
At Mailman, Dr. Schiavo has taught courses on Society, Health Equity and Health Communication; Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR); Health Communication; and Global Trends in Child Health and Development Programs. She is also an affiliate of the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and serves as a subject matter expert and co-investigator at the Region 2 Public Health Training Center (PHTC) on effective communication, health equity, and community engagement topics.
Dr. Schiavo has been actively engaged in the response to COVID-19 both in the United States and around the world. Since the pandemic first struck in March 2020, she has been spearheading the Health Equity Initiative's advocacy efforts to make sure health equity stayed on the table during the pandemic and has been leading community engagement efforts and forums to raise the influence of community voices on addressing COVID-19 inequities. In addition, she has collaborated with the Region 2 Public Health Training Center to investigate barriers to responding to COVID-19 in New York State and to design training modules to promote a community- and equity-driven approach to the COVID-19 response. At SECI, she has been working on building the capacity of public health professionals, community leaders, population health professionals, and health journalists in the United States and Brazil to implement a health equity- and human rights-driven lens in pandemic response and recovery efforts. Her work and perspectives on this domain have appeared in Health Promotion Practice, the Journal of Communication in Healthcare, Health Equity, The Washington Post, Reach MD, Elite Daily, and several blogs and podcast programs.
Dr. Schiavo has served as a senior consultant/advisor on multiple global health and public health interventions funded by UNICEF, The World Bank, the Rwanda Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ-Brasilia), the Office of Minority Health Resource Center, HHS Office of Minority Health, Safe State Alliance, Solving Kids Cancer, and other U.S. and global organizations. These projects included a communication initiative to address vaccine hesitancy and promote pediatric routine immunization (RI) in Kyrgyzstan, The One Thousand Days in The Land of One Thousand Hills national program in Rwanda to reduce chronic malnutrition and its impact on children and pregnant and breastfeeding women; a global handwashing campaign; a training program to frame diversity, equity, and inclusion in intervention and policy design for injury and violence prevention in the United States; and a national initiative to reduce inequities in infant mortality rates (IMR) within the Black community and other communities in the United States. In addition, she contributed to designing a therapeutic development initiative for pediatric cancer and is routinely consulted on community-based communication strategies, health equity metrics, and standards for public health and healthcare interventions, policies, and R&D therapeutic targets. Finally, her capacity building, training and workforce development experience includes participants from 400+ organizations.
A well-established practitioner and researcher, Dr. Schiavo has served on scientific, expert, and review panels for the National Institute of Health, the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Federation, UNICEF, and the American Public Health Association. Her research, advocacy, and capacity-building work has been supported by the Office of Minority Health Resource Center, HHS Office of Minority Health; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the Bank of America Charitable Gift Trust; the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), US DHHS; the Macy's Corporate Foundation; and the World Health Organization.
Among other projects, she is currently working on a contributed volume on Health Equity: Strategies for Action (Wiley, Fall/ Winter 2024) and also leads The Science of Trust Initiative at the Journal of Communication in Healthcare to encourage research, understanding, and solutions on the global public trust crisis in science, public health, and medicine.
Dr. Schiavo received the Distinguished Career Award of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Public Health Education and Health Promotion (PHEHP) section for her "lifetime work to advance health communication and health equity"; was recognized as one of 300 Women Leaders in Global Health by an initiative of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva; is an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM); and received a Presidential Citation by the Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE).
A frequent speaker in U.S. and international settings, Renata is fluent in English, Italian, and Portuguese and can read and understand Spanish and French.
Media experience includes interviews with Bloomberg News, BGI Webseries, BTJ Biotechnology Journal podcasts, Folha de S. Paulo, Radio Nacional Network, Sage Publications Podcasts, The Nation's Health, The Signal, Elite Daily, Inside Science, ReachMD, and The Washington Post, among others.
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