CHES® Spotlight
Lily Benig, MPH, CHES® : Connecting Science, Policy, and People Through Health Education
For Lily Benig, health education was not a straight-line career decision. It was something she kept finding her way back to. Benig’s early interests did not fit neatly into one lane. “I was always drawn to both science and writing,” she re- calls. “At the same time, I've always loved hearing, reading, and telling stories about the human side of life and technology.” Looking back, Benig noted that she kept finding her way into projects that involved explaining complicated ideas and helping people understand how health systems and science actually worked. Today, Benig’s work melds together biomedical science, public health, communica- tion, policy, and advocacy into an exciting role. Across those areas, her focus remains consistent: helping people make sense of complex health and science information in ways they can understand and use.
A “two-step stumble” into health education and liver health While earning her master’s degree at Tulane University, Benig was also working in COVID testing in rural schools. When that role left her with room to take on more, she started looking for opportunities that would bring her closer to health communication work. That search led her to a remote communications internship with Global Liver Institute. “It was a communications role, but within a health-focused organization, so it brought together several of the things I was most interested in,” she says. At the time, she had been applying to more traditional public health roles without much traction. Her resume, she admits, may have looked odd for some of those positions. But the communications role made sense to her. It drew on her science background and health communication skillsets. She started as an intern at the Institute, where she stayed for two
terms, and was eventually hired full-time. Her role grew wider into policy, public health, and advocacy work. But even as the projects changed, the need to communicate clearly remained at the center of it all. “I didn’t set out specifically to work in liver health,” Benig says, “but once I entered the field, I realized how many public health issues connect back to it.” Once she settled in, she found a field that provided her with all the things she truly cared about. “To me, the liver is deeply connected to public health because it touches so many areas of daily life, from what we consume to what we are exposed to in our envi-ronments,” she says. That connection helped her see liver health not as a narrow specialty, but as a topic linked to environmental health, food and nutrition, move-ment, chronic disease, infectious disease, stigma, and access to care.
Translating science for the people who need it Much of Benig’s work has focused on helping different audiences understand liver health and why it matters. The audience can shift from one project to the next: a patient trying to understand a diagnosis, a provider looking for clear educational tools, a policymaker reviewing a public health issue, or an advocate preparing to speak up in a regulatory or legislative setting. “I often hear the public health world saying we need to communicate better,” she says. “But the question is, what do we actually need to do? Health education specialists already have a framework for doing that well.” The Areas of Responsibility show up across much of her work. It has helped her create educational resources, reports, blogs, campaigns, videos, and web content, while also supporting policy and advocacy efforts such as public comments, data synthesis, advocate trainings, and science-based priorities. Seeing liver health through a global lens One project Benig is especially proud of is the Global State of Liver Health report, developed as part of the Global Liver Institute’s international work and its ‘Liver Health is Public Health’ initiative. The project involved research into the epidemiology and unique liver health risk factors of different countries. Each chapter included available data, country-specific context, and interviews with global experts working directly with live patients in that county. For Benig, the project was meaningful because it revealed both the shared and highly local nature of liver health. “It was fascinating to see both the common threads and the country-specific differ- Continued on page 10
NCHEC NEWS
PAGE 09
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator