Partner Spotlight: Public Health Perspective on Violence Prevention, Misinformation, and Working Upstream
- The Friendship Center
- 10 minutes ago
- 11 min read
Lewis and Clark Public Health Communications Specialist Amber Johnson discusses the intersections of public health with crisis advocacy, violence prevention, and addressing misinformation.
This summer, The Friendship Center partnered with Lewis and Clark Public Health (LCPH) for a public awareness campaign in response to a recent surge in reported chlamydia cases in Lewis and Clark County. In their July press release, LCPH stated that the increase in cases compared to the same period in 2025 met the epidemiological definition of an outbreak. In their investigations into the causes of the spike, LCPH found that a number of cases might’ve originated in sexual activity arranged between teens using social media apps like Snapchat. In addition to educating teens and parents about safe sex practices, consent, and the role social media can play in coercing young people into risky sexual behavior, the campaign aimed to raise awareness about the free, confidential, non-judgmental resources available in our community, like STI screening and counseling through LCPH’s public health nurses, and crisis support through our advocates.
LCPH Communications Specialist Amber Johnson has been a driving force behind all of the department’s public information efforts, including the chlamydia campaign. Besides being a skilled public health communicator, Amber has many years of experience working in the gender-based violence response and prevention space, including several years supporting our clients as a part-time crisis line advocate. Her background makes her the perfect person to speak to the many ways that interpersonal violence connects with public health. Something that she’s excellent at getting across is that “social contagions” like abuse, coercion, sexual exploitation, and misinformation are just as serious and far-reaching in their impacts as any disease outbreak. No matter the epidemic, public health departments have the important role of looking at population health in a holistic way, with the goal of not just treatment, but prevention.
Amber was kind enough to answer some of our questions about that prevention work and offer up some important public health perspective on what makes communities resilient against both disease and social epidemics like interpersonal violence. Check out what she had to say about some of the challenges that come with public health communications, the community’s response to this summer’s chlamydia campaign specifically, and the resources available to everyone through our public health department.
Responses have been minimally edited for clarity. Bold emphasis in responses is ours.
Separate from your full-time role with LCPH, you serve as one of our part-time on-call crisis line advocates. You have years of experience interacting with our clients, so we're sure you certainly see the connection between interpersonal violence and public health. For folks who maybe don't think of individual instances of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or stalking in the context of public health and prevention, how would you talk about the importance/relevance of addressing these issues as a matter of population health?
AJ: The work of violence response and prevention IS public health—just a very niche field. In many ways, violence is a social disease, and it can be a social contagion. After all, we know that violence begets more violence. And it can become a cycle that is very difficult to break.
I have worked for Lewis and Clark Public Health for three and a half wonderful years now. I have also been in the work of gender-based violence response and prevention on-and-off for 15 years—focused on the themes of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. And this work is not just anecdotal for me; it is also very personal.
I have the lived experience of gender-based religious abuse and sexual assault which resulted in years of poverty, suicidal ideation, unemployment, and homelessness as I freed myself from that abusive cycle of power and control and worked very hard and long to rebuild a sovereign life of economic security, health, and peace. All these years later, that struggle is, and probably always will be, the work of my life. And my experience is not unique or uncommon. It is why I stay in the work of gender-based violence response and prevention, if only part-time. I want people to know, “If I can do it, so can you.”
Being a vulnerable, marginalized human being is like living with a target on your back. For many disadvantaged people, they will spend their entire life dodging the slings and arrows of poverty, disease, violence, mental illness, addiction, incarceration, etc. In public health speak, we call these “health inequities.” Yes, a lucky and tenacious handful may be able to escape the coliseum. Sadly, many people never will. Knowing that, as public health professionals and crisis advocates, even as fellow human beings, we are offered two choices; that of practicing radical empathy or casting stones of judgment.
Rather than judging others as less than or lost causes, the question we should be asking people is, “What happened to you?”
Not that trauma or inequity, whether it occurs in childhood or adulthood, is ever an excuse for violence. There are loads of people who have had crappy childhoods or survived terrible ordeals who grow up and go on to be wonderful people and peaceful members of society. And radical empathy does not mean that criminals and offenders should get a free pass. Violent offenders, rapists, stalkers, pedophiles—they need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Full stop.
But we can ask bigger questions about causes and effects and correlations and start working on upstream efforts to help break cycles of violence and domination before more people get hurt. At some point in their lives, people are given a choice—to become what they hate or break the cycle of generational trauma. How do we reach those people and how do we provide them with the support and resources they need to make life-giving choices for themselves, their families, and their communities?
In modern public health circles, we talk a lot about the Social Determinants of Health:
Education Access and Quality
Health Care and Quality
Neighborhood and Built Environment
Social and Community Context
Economic Stability
It is true that anyone and everyone, regardless of their background or life circumstances, can experience violence—be it sexual, physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. However, it is also true that the same factors that can protect you from chronic and communicable disease can also protect you from both experiencing and perpetrating violence. Those factors include:
Secure and affordable housing
A decent job that pays the bills
Reliable transportation
Access to quality education
Access to quality healthcare
Healthy relationships with loving and supportive family and friends
Clean water and air
Safe neighborhoods with access to beautiful green spaces to recreate
Plentiful and nutritious food
These factors are a recipe for both health and peace; protective against both disease and interpersonal violence.
It is profoundly important to invest the time and resources in upstream efforts to stop violence and disease from ever happening in the first place. That is the kind of work that can transform families, communities, and even countries. And it is work that we invest in at Lewis and Clark Public Health.
The prevention of child abuse and neglect is one of the main objectives of our Child and Family Health programs—WIC and Home Visiting.
Our Strong Roots Coalition works to prevent substance misuse and connect individuals to recovery support services. This work is so important to violence prevention. Alcohol is strongly associated with domestic violence, increasing the risk and severity of abuse. And then there is meth, which is a problematic substance in Montana. Most of us know that meth is bad news. But once you sit with a woman in the emergency room who has been raped and beaten by a man high on methamphetamine—her body covered from head to foot in bruises—meth takes on a whole new level of ick.
Our Prevention Team is also focused on efforts to stop suicide—an epidemic in Montana. Self-inflicted violence is a tragedy that many Montana families know all too well. Sadly, suicide risk is high for victims of domestic and sexual violence. And what many people don’t know is that suicidal ideation is also a high-lethality factor for femicide and familicide.
Violence, in its many forms, is a social disease that I would love to see eradicated from our communities in Lewis and Clark County. For this reason, The Friendship Center and Lewis and Clark Public Health—along with so many other agencies and nonprofits—are such important, complementary partners in public health and safety.
One area where TFC's work and LCPH's has recently come together is around a campaign aimed at addressing a chlamydia outbreak in Lewis and Clark County. In addition to getting the word out about free, confidential, judgment-free testing and treatment for STIs, the campaign includes messages about consent and safe use of social media, which has been used by teens to facilitate some of the hookups that have resulted in infections. What response have you seen to the campaign so far? Have more folks sought free testing/treatment?
AJ: Yes, people are hearing our message—both parents and teens—and we are seeing testing rates increase. That is a great thing as we try and snuff out this recent chlamydia outbreak.
There is no question that social media platforms are used to exploit, manipulate, and pressure children and teens into risky sexual activities. Snapchat gets 10,000 reports of sextortion each month. Not each year; each month. It is an online predator’s dreamscape. We would be naive to believe that that kind of illegal and/or unethical behavior doesn’t also happen right here in Helena, Montana.
The joint messaging we are conducting with The Friendship Center is this: No teen should feel pressured to have sex or send pictures. And no teen should feel pressured to have sex without a condom, just because one party “doesn’t like how it feels.” They get to say NO. It’s also important to remind both teenagers and adults that drug- and alcohol-facilitated sexual assault is a crime. Sextortion is a crime. Revenge porn is a crime. Disseminating nude pictures without consent is a crime. No excuses.
We can only hope that parents are having courageous and kind conversations with their teens about both social media use and sex. We are also encouraging teens to talk to their parents. But we know, sadly, that not all parents are safe people. In those instances, we really hope those teens have a trusted adult in their life that they can talk to—a teacher, a coach, a school or public health nurse, or maybe even a crisis advocate answering the phone at The Friendship Center.
Specific to your role with LCPH, what do you think is unique or challenging about outreach and keeping the community informed in a public health context? What do you think is the key to breaking through some of those challenges?
AJ: The biggest challenge to public health communications is misinformation and disinformation on the internet. Trust in institutions, particularly government, is at an all-time low. People are also extremely polarized right now; we have turned almost EVERYTHING into a political boxing match. Now throw AI into the mixer of confusion and outrage and give it a stir. It’s no secret that social media itself IS a public health crisis.
This is why we always try to ground our public health work, and communications, in evidence-based research and epidemiology. Epidemiology is the statistics-based study of health challenges, how disease spreads, who is affected, why, and how to prevent disease from occurring. Good, robust data tells a story.
Even still, in a world where verifiable facts are dismissed as “fake news” and conspiracy theories reign as king on the internet, it can be very difficult to cut through the noise and get people the information they need to protect and improve their health. Especially when you have so many “health” and “diet” influencers saying so many different things and selling so many different products and solutions. “I did my own research” is often just code for “I watched some YouTube videos.”
To some extent, I think many people just pick a side or a cause and build a tribe and identity there, then find something online or in a book to use as proof to justify their ideology (a reminder that absolutely anyone can write and publish a book about absolutely anything). This is what we call an echo chamber.
Belonging feels better than uncertainty to the human psyche, and it is a whole lot easier than learning to read peer-reviewed medical research papers or sitting with the mystery. We all do it. The question is, are we self-aware enough to admit that to ourselves, and to question our assumptions, beliefs, opinions, and indoctrinations? And, when presented with verifiable facts and contradictions, are we willing to say, “I was wrong” and change our mind?
Revisiting the topic of social media, it can make public awareness campaigns challenging. People on the internet are not always engaging in good faith. You all have seen your fair share of it in connection with this chlamydia awareness campaign, but you've also handled some of the snarkier comments with a humorous and educational tone. What are some of the main comments or misconceptions you've seen in the community's reaction to the campaign, and how have you addressed them?
AJ: Regarding our chlamydia campaign, we suffer more from “unhelpful” commentary than from misconceptions. Social media really does bring out the worst in people. Have I mentioned yet how social media IS a public health crisis?
To the best of my ability (my imperfect and very human ability), it is my job to neutralize hate/anger/fear/cruelty/etc. on our social media channels, and to make and keep friends. As you can imagine, communicating with disgruntled, mean, or ridiculous people on the internet is not my favorite part of the job.
More often than not, I simply don’t feed the trolls. But it’s also important to show our community that we are listening, and when appropriate, engage in dialogue with the people we serve. Even when it’s tense or uncomfortable. I take it case by case. When engaging with people online, I primarily use two tools—kindness and humor. The consistent use of these disarms the haters and deescalates tensions. Throw in some educational tidbits et voilà! I guess that’s my style. And it usually works.
Thinking specifically of teens and parents, what are the main messages you hope those groups take away from the chlamydia campaign specifically, or maybe even more broadly about the resources available through their public health department?
AJ: Our most important talking points are these:
If you are sexually active, GET TESTED. Regularly. LCPH offers low- to no-cost testing and treatment for youth and adults.
Condoms work. Use them.
Having multiple sexual partners puts you at high risk for sexually transmitted infections. No judgment; just information.
You get to say NO. You should never feel pressured to have sex, especially sex without a condom.
And finally, please visit our Teen Clinic to get tested! In partnership with PureView Health Clinic, we will be hosting Teen Clinics every first and third Tuesday of the month from 3-5 PM, starting August 4. These confidential appointments include STI testing by a nurse and a follow-up appointment with a medical provider. To schedule an appointment, teens can call us at 406-457-8900, text us at 406-594-2949, or just walk in the LCPH doors (facing Valley Bank) at 1930 9th Ave in Helena.
We're sure it can be a downer to have to be the messenger when there's a problem or threat to health in our community. What keeps you inspired or motivated to keep our community informed?
AJ: You could have all the money in the world, but if you don’t have health or love, then what does it matter? Having healthy bodies, minds, and relationships is the recipe for a good life. Not a life without pain or struggle, but still, a good life. And I want all those things (healthy bodies, minds, and relationships) for all people. It’s one of the many reasons I love working in both public health communications and crisis advocacy.
Somedays, I am overwhelmed by the great suffering I see in the world; terrible suffering happening right here on the streets of Helena. I answer crisis line calls for The Friendship Center; I know people are suffering, and sadly, I can’t always help them. It is so easy to become hard and bitter and fatalistic; to stick my head in the sand and give up, or to pick up those stones and cast them in judgment. It is so much harder to stay soft and kind and generous. Finding reasons to keep laughing sustains me.
In a world that is so broken, I get the choice every day on whether I want to be part of the solution or part of the problem. And I choose to be a healer. So, I keep showing up, however imperfectly. In the words of Edward Everett Hale, “I cannot do everything; but still I can do something.”
The Friendship Center partners with many organizations, agencies, businesses, and individual supporters to ensure everyone in our community is supported with care and dignity. We regularly highlight some of the fantastic people and organizations that we partner and collaborate with for our blog. Sign up for our email newsletter to make sure you don't miss a partner spotlight and learn more about some of the services available in our community.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, sexual violence, or stalking, The Friendship Center can help. Visit our services page to learn about our free, confidential, 24/7 services and check out our resource pages to explore facts, statistics, and helpful FAQs for victims and advocates.
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