Public Health Authorities Editing and Proofreading Services

Public health communication operates on a knife edge between two failures. Say too little too cautiously and people fill the gap with worse information; say too much too confidently and the inevitable revision costs you the audience you will need next time. The recent past has made this harder rather than easier: populations have learned that official advice changes, and a substantial number have concluded that changing advice means the advice was never reliable. Rebuilding from that position is a writing problem as much as a scientific one.

We edit what public health authorities produce — outbreak and incident communications, public health orders and their explanations, guidance for the public on vaccination, screening and prevention, guidance for clinicians and settings such as schools and long-term care, epidemiological reports and surveillance summaries, medical officer of health statements and reports, health equity and social determinants documentation, environmental health notices including water advisories and air quality, harm reduction and substance use material, sexual health and communicable disease information, food safety and inspection communications, health promotion campaigns, and briefings for elected officials and partner agencies. Our editors check that uncertainty is expressed consistently and that guidance to the public says what to do rather than describing a risk.

Communicating a change in advice is the specific skill this field now needs most, and the instinct — to present the new guidance as though it had always been the guidance — is the one that does the damage. People notice, and the noticing is worse than the change. We write these so the message states plainly that the advice has changed, says what the previous advice was, explains what new information caused the change in terms of the evidence rather than in terms of the decision, and says explicitly that people who followed the old advice did the right thing with what was known then. That last sentence is routinely omitted and is the one that protects future compliance, because the alternative teaches people that following official advice may later be recast as their error. Where a change reflects a shift in judgement rather than new evidence, saying so is uncomfortable and is still better than the audience working it out.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including surveillance data, material relating to active investigations and guidance before release. We are editors rather than clinicians, epidemiologists or public health advisers, and we offer no view on any guidance, order or clinical question. What we can do is make the writing clear, honest about uncertainty, and usable by the people it is addressed to.