PR Week: Renate Myles Named Director of Communications at the Public Health Institute

“National Institutes of Health communications director Renate Myles has departed the federal agency after 18 years to join the Public Health Institute as director of communications.

Effective December 15, Myles will support PHI’s president and CEO Melissa Stafford Jones and the independent nonprofit’s team to strengthen its visibility, credibility and connection with partners and audiences, Myles said in a LinkedIn post Tuesday announcing her career transition.

The Public Health Institute is an independent nonprofit that leads and manages public health projects as a fiscal sponsor, providing operational infrastructure and guidance to public health programs around the world, according to the organization’s website.

Myles told PRWeek that working at PHI is a “dream” for her coming out of nearly two decades in federal communications and a particularly “traumatic” year for the government communications community.

“Myles worked within the Office of the Director at NIH and partnered with communications teams and offices across each of the agency’s 27 institutes and centers. She has served in the director of communication role since 2021 and previously held roles within the agency, including as a chief press officer in the Office of Communication and Public Liaison, chief of news and social media and deputy director of public affairs.

The communications team in the Office of the Director serves as a corporate comms function, Myles explained, establishing communications policies, managing clearance processes and any large NIH announcements.

Over the last two years, Myles led an effort to develop the first-ever five year NIH wide communications plan, bringing together each of the offices under a single mission for communications at NIH. The effort was intended to streamline and reduce redundancy and make it easier for the agency’s audiences to find the information they were seeking in a way that they trust and understand.

“In her new role at PHI, Myles said she’’ll continue to be focused on public health and biomedical research with a community-focused lens. She’ll report to Jones and oversee a team of about two — a departure from the size and scale of NIH, she emphasized, that will require her to be more strategic.

Upon stepping into the role next week, Myles said she’s prioritizing increasing PHI’s visibility and voice as a thought leader and translating scientific information into plain language that people understand and find meaningful, particularly in the wake of industry advancements tools like AI.

“Organizations like the Public Health Institute are never going to be able to do what the federal government does, especially in terms of monitoring disease and outbreaks and so forth. But they’re going to have to fill gaps,” she said. “If I can’t do it in the federal government, it’s so important to me that I want to continue to do it with a nonprofit or private organization that can help bolster public health at a time when it’s really being shaken.”

Myles encouraged agencies and companies to hire a former federal communications person amid the continued exodus. As hundreds of former government staff remain out of work, Myles emphasized the resiliency and unique skillset of her former colleagues and contractors that companies would benefit from tapping into.”

Originally published by PR Week