‘New normal’ splices economy, public health
To more forward into the “new normal,” businesses will need to work hand-inhand with public health officials to rebound the economy and return trust to employees and customers, experts said.
“Public health and business have always been strange bedfellows,” said Dr. Arnold Epstein, chairman of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
“Business and public health now share similar interests, business cannot really open up at all unless it institutes safeguards for public health,” said Epstein, who is also chief of health services and policy research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Epstein and other experts on business and public health spoke in a webinar Wednesday hosted by The Forum at the Chan School of Public Health.
Epstein said many people are still worried about heading out to reopened businesses, taking flights and sending children off to summer camp, further pushing business and public health together to quell fears.
One way to build trust, according to Richard Edelman, CEO of public relations company Edelman, is to rely on real people, not top executives to communicate messaging.
“In business we have to do better at balance and tell real people stories and get the information across in the way people can absorb it,” said Edelman.
Linda Hill, professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School added, “Business, health and education and deeply intertwined and if you don’t have an educated population to use their judgement to work through what they are seeing, then you have a problem.”
The economy has seen a significant downturn due to coronavirus and unemployment rates have skyrocketed as hundreds of thousands of Americans face layoffs.
The business community should be informed by public health and protecting health security, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, former director of the Centers for Disease Control.
“If we can’t get it done now, we won’t have a chance to take it this far again,” said Gerberding.
The pandemic has also greatly impacted the health care and pharma industries, as noted by the Harvard experts Wednesday.
“We have transformed telehealth overnight in the context of this pandemic and I think that will extend to greater access and utility in rural areas,” said Gerberding.
She added, “We have sort of a tsunami of people at home right now who, for a variety of reasons, aren’t seeking the primary care they need and that will come back to haunt us.”
Investing in treatments, vaccines and the health and safety of employees and consumers will also help to boost the economy and bounce businesses out of the red, the experts said.