Writing for Public Health: A Meeting of Manipulation and the Greater Good By Rosie Mckinlay-Mench

Public Health is a broad field. It covers everything from salicylic acid safety in day spas to the desertification of once-flourishing rain forests. Something that may seem trivial, like the prevalence of nail-biting on city transit, is probably being examined in a social science PhD program somewhere for its effect on the spread of infectious disease or correlation with anxiety in inner-city residents as we speak. Surely, in this vast expanse of a field, there’s room for a writer? Perhaps even a bit of creativity? It appears the answer to both is yes.

Content Providers

Content Providers work to provide businesses with information in the form of text and graphics.  People hire Content Providers to enhance the professional look and appeal of their websites and print materials.  Often times, organizations feel that they can get by without hiring someone to provide them will quality information.  Usually, these people fall back on their own inferior skill in order to create this content, which sometimes falls short of professional quality.  It is generally the stubbornness of business owners that lead to websites having poor written content, documents having a second-rate look, and manuals looking like an uneducated individual assembled them.  It is for this reason that a Content Provider's job is very important to the business world.  In that same token, a Content Provider's job is recession proof (in theory) for as long as there are businesses and organizations in need of good content to provide to the masses, there will be a need for someone to create it.

Generally, a Content Provider's job involves research and an ability to learn quickly.  More often that not, the content being provided is something that the Content Provider isn’t familiar with or well versed in.  For this reason, a Content Provider must be able to think quickly on their feet.  They must be able to quickly adapt to each new job, which will require them to invest their time and energy in a subject or area that they may not know much about.  In most cases, the information is provided to them by the business or organization that employs them and they are expected to assemble that information into a coherent whole.  The ideal Content Providers are also Technical Writers and they are able to amalgamate their writing and common sense skills to form slick, concise, succinct information for the business world.

Technical Writing

Technical writing is a style of writing used in a wide array of fields, from computer software to finance. These writers specialize in researching in depth information on subject and re-interpreting this for an audience to consume. This audience can be either specialists within the field or the audience could be a group completely unfamiliar with the work. This could mean explaining how to use a program system to a computer programmer or writing an instruction manual for someone use at home.

Technical writers must have a firm grasp of the English language as well excellent communication skills. A large portion of the job is being able to analyze a specialized subject and then explain in a way that people can understand.