Adrienne Ammerman
Health communications professional with WNC Health Network | Asheville, North Carolina
Project Overview
Public health communication that is engaging, evidence-based, culturally competent, and delivered by trusted local messengers is critical to support public health behaviors and systems changes that can improve health and even save lives. Yet local public health communicators face a variety of systemic challenges when it comes to sharing health information, including difficulty tailoring existing state and national campaigns, limited social media expertise, and lack of resources for communications development, implementation, and measurement.
Public health communicators need easy-to-use tools to bridge these gaps and meet the health information needs of their communities. They also need tools to help them measure what is working, what is not working, and what works to do better when it comes to sharing credible, actionable health information.
Adrienne’s Information Futures Fellowship is focused on developing a prototype design, action plan, and funding strategy for a scalable health communications platform that can be adapted to meet health communicators’ needs. She will work with local health communicators to test several key platform concepts on real-world health communications, including customization of existing messaging and materials, mechanisms for local tailoring and branding, support for digital ad placement, and regional tracking of performance measures to guide and refine communications strategies.
About Adrienne
Adrienne Ammerman is a health communications professional with WNC Health Network who is dedicated to empowering health communicators to support their communities with evidence-based, culturally competent, and measurable health information.
In 2019, she initiated the creation of a collective impact collaborative that has grown to include 75 health communicators representing public health agencies, hospitals, and community-based partners across the 18 counties of western North Carolina. During the pandemic, Adrienne raised more than $1 million to develop a customizable regional communications campaign to build local communicators’ capacity to mitigate the impacts of Covid-19. Highlighted by the CDC as a model strategy, this approach is now being adapted in WNC for use with other priority health issues.
Adrienne holds an MA in communications with a concentration in health communication from Johns Hopkins University and a BA from The New School. She is a musician and mother of two who has lived in Asheville, NC. for the past decade.