Dr. Fauci speaks to Foreign Press: Key Lessons in Communications
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci accepted the Association Foreign Press Correspondent’s (AFC-USA) Honorary Award of the Year in December 2020 for his lifetime contribution to public service. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, is one of the world’s most-cited biomedical scientists. He will soon be called upon his seventh presidential administration as a government official.
“I am not a journalist, but a physician-scientist and public health official,” Dr. Fauci said, after expressing his thanks and gratitude to the Association of Foreign Press for presenting him with this award. “These are two very different career paths, but they have some common features.” He explained that clear communication is essential in his work, especially when new diseases, like the coronavirus, emerge.
Dr. Fauci is no foreigner with infectious outbreaks and epidemics. He was there, researching, from the start of the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He spent countless hours studying the anthrax attacks. Similarly, he held the same position for SARS, pandemic influenza, Ebola, Zika, and now COVID-19.
“The current pandemic of COVID-19 posses the biggest threat to global health in more than 100 years,” Dr. Fauci said. “My experience with COVID-19 has reinforced some key lessons about communications that I have learned over many outbreaks in the previous four decades. For me, these apply to all audiences.”
Lesson Number One - Fidelity to the Truth: Dr. Fauci believes that virtually all truths are revealed by science-based evidence and data. Consistency and truth-telling are critical to maintaining integrity. “We must tell the truth, even if it means saying ‘I don’t know,” he said. People need to hear the actual truth versus how they want it to be. Dr. Fauci believes telling the truth builds credibility.
Lesson Number Two - Transparency: “We earn public trust when we are open and honest and do not withhold information. Make sure everyone understands where we are going, what our goals are, and how we propose to achieve them,” Dr. Fauci said. “When we falter in transparency, people stop believing what we say or stop listening altogether.”
Lesson Number Three - Communicate Clearly to Achieve Understanding: Dr. Fauci believes it is important for people of all fields to use language that everyone can understand. It’s an essential practice to build “public trust in science as the pathway to resolving the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuring that the fruits of our research, such as vaccines, have the greatest potential benefit,” he said. “As COVID-19 vaccines are deployed, we have formidable communication challenges ahead of us, as we work to convey with honesty, transparency and clarity, the benefits of vaccinations to sometimes skeptical audiences.”
Fauci ended his remarks addressing the Foreign Press Correspondents with this message: “Please stay safe, keep well and continue your important and outstanding work.”