With Gabby Stern, Director of Communications, World Health Organisation, presented by Danny Rogers, Editor in Chief, PR Week

Gabby Stern and her team at the World Health Organisation (WHO) are seven months in on handling communications around one of the biggest health crises that the world has ever seen. Taking rare time out to speak at the AMEC Global Measurement Conference from her home in Geneva, Stern offers frank insight into her role, the challenges and constraints she faces, and some surprising wins in her team’s battle against the coronavirus.

Stern joined WHO from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in March last year, during the throws of the Ebola virus. She is no stranger to crisis communications and talks easily about the “intense experience” of leading her team at WHO during Ebola and, currently, the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the WHO mission to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable, lies the knowledge that anything can happen at any time…and it does!

Sharing fascinating examples and anecdotes from managing communications during this rapidly-evolving pandemic, Stern also delivers valuable nuggets of advice for best practice crisis handling. Critically, in an urgent situation, the priority is always to figure out who you need to reach and what messages do they need most to protect themselves and save lives, then how to do that quickly and at scale.

She talks about evolving the message, and being innovative, creative and ambitious in building reach and engagement very quickly.

Stern pays tribute to the array of digital and social media companies, technology companies and creative agencies that have offered pro bono support and enabled the communications team to power from zero to full speed within weeks. In fact, she describes it as enabling an overnight transformation into a contemporary and creative function.

However, global communications across hard to reach populations, diverse demographics and multiple languages, requires enormous resources on an average day. The challenge for Stern has been magnified by misunderstandings, distortion, criticism, misinformation and – she notes – some very poor journalism, that all contribute to confusion.

The communications team is also working to strengthen its measurement and evaluation practices. Though at the beginning of this journey, Stern is determined to understand whether communication is having an impact. Through partnerships with experts, other UN agencies and member nations, she talks about intentions to learn and garner support in embedding measurement throughout all the team’s activities.

Looking ahead, an exhausted but optimistic Stern talks about the need for health to remain at the forefront of global agenda, side by side with climate change, and for its investment to be a priority for all nations. As the pandemic abates, it is clear that her job won’t lessen and she knows from experience that her crisis communications skills are unlikely to be able to rest for long.