In January 2021, the CTCA Communications Committee (CC) Co-Chairs decided to launch a monthly journal club that takes place the hour before CC meetings. The journal club provides members with an opportunity to read the latest relevant publications for TB CC efforts. The initial meeting focused on the publication:
Shining a light on an invisible, dormant threat, Insights for developing a communications campaign to encourage testing and treatment of Latent Tuberculosis Infection, Fall 2020.
This report on latent TB infection (LTBI) messaging research, conducted among groups most impacted by TB in the U.S., is the first of its kind supported and released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Division of TB Elimination. This report presented themes to explore further when raising awareness of the threat of TB disease, the risks for having LTBI and the ability to treat LTBI to prevent TB disease from developing.
José Rangel-Garibay, a Health Educator with the Los Angeles Department of Public Health and the mastermind of the CTCA CC Journal Club, led the next discussion about two brief articles: Public Health Messaging in an Era of Social Media and Evaluating the Potential Role of Social Media in Preventative Health Care. He demonstrated best practices for facilitating these discussions by selecting 2-5 pages to discuss, summarizing the articles, sharing their methods, target audience(s), findings/results, their limitations, potential applications for this group and any next steps. He further instructed that ideally articles would be distributed, and a volunteer facilitator secured, two weeks in advance of each meeting. Below is a list of the past articles used for the CC Journal Club:
March: Longitudinal Risk Communication: A Research Agenda for Communicating in a Pandemic
June: https://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/developmaterials/testing-messages-materials.html
Join the Journal Club through the Contact Us link below.