Elizabeth Hart works as the Tennessee Department of Health’s Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Engagement.
She stopped by The Kennel via a Zoom call to discuss her work on the Emmy-nominated Tennessee Faces of Opioids campaign and share her thoughts on my health campaign proposal intended to address the ongoing opioid epidemic, which continues to plague the state of Tennessee and the United States at large. This campaign was designed for my Health Communications class at Middle Tennessee State University.
You can find a copy of the campaign proposal here, which also features an extensive literature review explaining why I chose this approach. You might notice that I propose a “4-5 minute” runtime for these podcasts, but I found that this time limit was nearly impossible to achieve with this interview. Upon further consideration, I would expect this limit to be very difficult to achieve with future interviews, especially if future ones were to include interviews with former addicts, whose real-life stories would probably include a lot of necessary nuances.
When editing an unscripted podcast, I think it’s essential to preserve a discussion that unfolds naturally. The improvised nature of this medium is what makes it engaging to its consumers, and it would have been impossible to do that after our 20-minute discussion concluded. Additionally, Elizabeth simply had a lot of vital ideas to share throughout, so the final product ended up being 16 minutes.
Thanks to Elizabeth for stopping by! I hope you find the discussion engaging and informative.
Elizabeth Hart - TN Department of Health's Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Engagement