The Hub campaign wins EMPA award

We are delighted to announce that the National Biosecurity Training Hub’s communications campaign has won the Emergency Media and Public Affairs (EMPA) Australia Award for Excellence in Emergency Communications in the Readiness and Resilience category.

EMPA aims to set benchmarks, celebrate best-practice and build a community of practice for the benefit of emergency communicators and the communities they serve. The 2024 Awards were presented at the conference dinner in Canberra on Wednesday 5 June 2024.

PHA’s CEO, Sarah Corcoran, and National Manager: Marketing and Communications, Amanda Yong attended the event at the EMPA conference dinner in Canberra where they accepted the award.

Over the past five years, the Australian biosecurity sector has experienced extraordinary pressures and national responses to animal, aquatic, environmental, plant and natural disaster incidents. These recent events positioned biosecurity as a long-awaited national priority, which led to a surge in demand for training resources to support biosecurity endeavours.

The Hub was developed based on an increased demand for biosecurity training and the need for a centralised, coordinated approach to national biosecurity training. The Hub offers a national repository of online biosecurity training for industry, government and community, connecting biosecurity training providers across Australia.

The Hub’s extensive communications campaign aimed to create awareness of the National Biosecurity Online Training Hub website: biotraininghub.com.au; encourage and increase participation in a shared biosecurity culture; boost enrolments in biosecurity training; raise awareness with potential training providers to utilise the Hub for their biosecurity training courses; demonstrate the value of multi-jurisdictional partnerships and collaboration; and to promote ease of access for learners seeking relevant biosecurity training.

The development of The Hub communications plan took into consideration a conservative communications budget. To make the most of the allocated resources, the PHA team took on the responsibility for developing the communications strategy and implementation plan as well as the handling of creative work and production in-house.

This recognition is a testament of the significant contribution to emergency communications work of PHA, along with our partners, the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (QDAF), the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Agriculture Victoria, and Animal Health Australia.

Learn more about the 2024 categories and winners.