Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated: May 20, 2026

About Arclet

  • Arclet is a health communications platform built by practitioners, for practitioners. It helps people who share health information in their communities — whether that's at a local health department, a community organization, a state agency, or a health center — find vetted health messaging, customize it for their community, get feedback, post to social media, and see whether it's working. We think of it as a "Canva for public health" — a one-stop shop for the entire health communications workflow.

  • Anyone who needs to share health information with their community. Our core users are public health communicators at local and state health departments, but we also work with community-based organizations, federally qualified health centers, hospitals, universities, nonprofits, and marketing agencies that support public health clients. Many of our users aren't full-time communications people — they're health educators, emergency preparedness coordinators, nurses, or deputy health directors who also happen to manage their agency's social media channels.

  • Most existing content hubs are topic-specific (only HIV, only vaccines) or agency-specific (only CDC resources). Arclet pulls together assets from a wide range of credible public health content creators — from the American Heart Association to state health departments to the Ad Council — all in one searchable place. And unlike a static toolkit on a website, Arclet doesn't stop at discovery. You can customize the asset, get community feedback, post directly to your social platforms, and track performance — all without leaving the platform.

  • Arclet was founded by Adrienne Ammerman, who spent 20 years working in nonprofit and public health communications before building this platform. Arclet grew directly out of a five-year health communicators collaborative Adrienne led in western North Carolina, where hospitals, health departments, and community organizations worked together on shared messaging during COVID and beyond. The idea took shape during a fellowship at Brown University's Information Futures Lab, and early development was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and North Carolina's entrepreneurial ecosystem. The team is led by public health practitioners — not just technologists — and the platform is designed based on years of co-design with the people it serves. You can read more about our origin story in this interview.

  • We use a Results Based Accountability framework — measuring not just how much we're doing, but how well we're doing it and whether anyone is better off. In North Carolina, where we have the deepest user base, early adopters are reporting an increase in capacity, and users consistently say the platform is saving them time each month.

  • The name came out of a brainstorming session in early 2023, during our founder’s fellowship at Brown’s Information Futures Lab. Adrienne has said: “I was sitting with post-it notes and journals, looking for a word that captured what I was trying to build. The word "arc" kept calling to me — story arcs, the arc of justice, the moral arc. I paired it with "let," which felt open and giving. When I looked it up, I discovered that "arclet" means the small arc of a universe. It felt right: something that seems simple up close but is part of something much larger.” For our users, bending the arc means working toward health equity, filling information gaps, and making sure communities have the health information they need and deserve. At Arclet, bending the arc means creating the tools that our field deserves while continuing to prioritize our most under-resourced users.

Getting Started

  • Sign up for a trial, or if your state or coalition has a code, use that during signup to get covered access. The process takes just a couple of minutes.

  • We offer hands-on onboarding support to help you get set up — uploading your logos, connecting your socials, and creating your reviewer groups. We send a user newsletter every two weeks highlighting the newest features and content. We hold optional monthly office hours where you can connect with other users and get help. And we're always available by email for questions or feedback.

  • We welcome it — it's how we decide what to build next. You can use the "Share Feedback" button in the platform, email us directly, or share it during office hours or on a call. The most specific, actionable feedback we get tends to come from people who are actually using the platform — and that feedback directly shapes our roadmap.

Content Library

  • Our library includes over 2,000 vetted public health messaging assets across 100+ health topics, from more than 70 trusted content creators. Right now, the library is primarily social media graphics (static images), with growing collections of video and carousel content. We're actively building out the library to include flyers, brochures, and other offline materials as well.

  • Our team reviews every asset for timeliness, accuracy, and alignment with health communications best practice. We research the Terms of Use for each asset to determine whether it can be shared as-is, or whether users are allowed to edit and co-brand it. We also have a Content Advisory Council — a volunteer group that includes communications leaders from organizations like NACCHO — that advises us when content questions get complicated, such as shifts in vaccine recommendations.

  • Currently, the majority of our content is in English and Spanish. Expanding to additional languages is a priority on our roadmap. If your team has specific language needs, let us know — it helps us prioritize.

  • Yes. You can upload assets you've created in Canva, InDesign, or anywhere else. When you upload, the content stays in your own account — it doesn't become part of the shared Arclet library. But you can still use all of Arclet's other tools on it: request feedback, schedule posts, and track analytics.

  • Yes, through a separate process. If you've created a campaign you're proud of and want to make available to other health communicators, reach out to our team. We'll vet it and get it into the library, credited to your organization. This is how it works with content partners like NC DHHS — they send us their assets as they create them, and we make them available to all users. description

  • Content partners are trusted public health content creators who actively share their messaging through Arclet. As they develop new campaigns, they provide assets to our team. We upload them, tag them by agency and topic, and make them discoverable in the library. Users can then filter to find your organization's assets specifically. We also provide metrics back to content partners on how their assets are being used, shared, and what kind of engagement they're getting. There is no cost to being a content partner. Please reach out to us if you’re interested in being a content partner.

Editing & Customization

  • Yes — if the content creator has allowed editing. When an asset is editable, you can drag and drop your logo, add a banner, or place a QR code directly in the platform. If an asset is not editable (for example, most CDC assets), it will be clearly marked, and the editing tools won't appear. You'll always know what you're allowed to do.

  • Right now, you can do drag-and-drop editing: add your logo, place a banner, do simple cropping and annotations. We're actively working on expanding the editing tools. This is one of our top development priorities.

  • Yes. You can download any asset as a JPEG or PNG for use in newsletters, presentations, websites, or print materials. We don't currently offer design-file formats like InDesign or Illustrator files.

Publishing & Social Media

  • Currently, you can connect Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. We can add additional platforms based on user priorities. Once you connect your accounts in Settings, you typically only need to do it once.

  • Yes. You can schedule posts up to a year in advance — though we wouldn't necessarily recommend scheduling that far out. For busy communicators who only have an hour a week for social media, this is a big time-saver. You can batch-schedule a month of content and then just jump in as needed for timely or emergent topics.

  • That's the goal. Many of our users can't afford those tools, and they have far more complexity than most public health communicators need. Arclet offers the core scheduling and publishing functionality, plus the health-specific content library, feedback tools, and AI features — all in one place and at a fraction of the cost. We don’t yet have all of the functionality of these more generic marketing tools, but we are on that path!

  • We've worked through this with several agencies. Arclet does not pull any health department data or patient information. It simply connects to your social media accounts to post on your behalf — the same way Hootsuite or any scheduling tool would. We're happy to join a call with your IT team to answer their questions. We've done this before and it has helped agencies get approval.

  • We can help with that! Reach out if you need assistance with talking points, giving a demo, or brainstorming funding sources. We’ve also created this “Why Arclet” one-pager that you can share with your leadership.

Analytics

  • Your analytics dashboard shows reach, impressions, likes, and engagement for everything you post through the platform. It's designed to be clean and simple — just the metrics you need, without the overwhelming complexity of the Meta business suite.

  • Yes. You can create your own custom tags — like "CHA Priority: Oral Health" or "Measles Response" — and tag posts as you go. Then you can filter your analytics by those tags, making it easy to pull performance data for a specific campaign, grant report, or accreditation requirement.

  • Yes. You can select posts and email a summary of their analytics to a colleague — helpful when someone on your team is writing a grant report or presenting to the board of health.

  •  For state-level or coalition partners, we're building out dashboard functionality that provides aggregate reporting: how many local users shared messaging on a given topic, what kind of collective reach and engagement they achieved, and which assets performed best. This goes well beyond traditional toolkit metrics of "how many people downloaded it" — we're tracking what actually happened after the download.

Arli - AI Health Comms Copilot

  • Arli is Arclet's AI-powered health communications copilot. You describe the audience you're trying to reach, and Arli provides suggestions for how to tailor your messaging — things like simplifying language, making it more culturally relevant, or adding a local call to action. Arli includes citations for where its suggestions come from, drawing on health communications research, community health assessment data, CDC guidelines, and personas developed from interviews with community health workers and public health experts.

  • No. Arli is always opt-in. It's clearly marked in the platform, and you choose whether to engage with it. We know not everyone is comfortable with AI tools, and some agencies have policies around AI use. You can use every other feature of Arclet without ever touching Arli.

  • No. Arli does not access any health department data, patient records, or personally identifiable information. It's trained on publicly available health communications research, best practices, and community health data. If your organization wanted to train Arli on specific local data — like your community health assessment findings or your style guide — that would be a collaborative process you initiate with our team.

Feedback & Collaboration

  • You can create reviewer groups — like an internal review team, a vaccine task force, a group of parents from your WIC program, or a coalition advisory committee. When you want feedback on a draft message, you select the group and hit Share. They receive an email with the draft image and can click through to leave comments in real time. All comments appear in one place on your draft — no more creating SurveyMonkey surveys or wading through email threads to connect feedback with specific images.

  • No. Reviewers just need an email address. They receive a link, click on it, and leave their feedback. No login required.

  • Yes. Right now, many teams share a single login. We're actively building out team collaboration features that will support different roles within a team — for example, one person can draft and schedule content, while another person has approval authority. That's on our near-term roadmap.

Pricing & Access

  • Arclet uses a tiered subscription model based on the population your agency serves. For a small organization serving a population under 50,000, it starts at $399/year with unlimited seats. Pricing scales up from there, with state-level enterprise partnerships for statewide coverage. We publish our pricing transparently on our website. You can see the full rationale behind our pricing model in What It Costs to Build Public Health Communications Infrastructure.

  • It means everyone on your team can use the platform under one subscription. You're not paying per user. Whether you have 2 people or 20 people using it, the price is the same.

  • We have an Arclet Access Fund for organizations that need the platform but don't have the budget for it. You can request access, and we'll work to make it available. A majority of our current users pay nothing — either because their state agency covers the cost, or because they're supported through the Access Fund. Our commitment: cost will never be a barrier to access.

  • Yes. That's exactly how it works in North Carolina and Michigan. The state-level partner has a contract with Arclet, and local health departments and their key community partners receive access through a code — no cost to them. We can map out what statewide coverage would look like for your state based on your county populations and provide a proposal.

  • Yes, and we encourage it. We've been successfully written into proposals and budgets alongside CDC public health infrastructure grants, state communications contracts, and capacity-building grants. We're happy to provide language, letters of support, and budget justification for your proposal. If you have a client or partner applying for a grant that includes communications capacity, reach out — we'd love to be a thought partner.

Structure, Sustainability & How We Build

  • After twenty years working in nonprofits and public health, our founder experienced too many tools that were built on grant funding, only to disappear when the grant cycle ended or the political winds shifted. She chose to experiment with a for-profit social impact structure so Arclet could sustain itself through a mix of subscriptions, contracts, grants, and mission-aligned investment — giving us as many pathways as possible to grow into the kind of durable infrastructure our field deserves. That said, cost is never a barrier to access. A majority of our current users pay nothing to use the platform. You can read more about this in the first piece in our newsletter series, What It Actually Takes to Build Public Health Communications Infrastructure.

  • We start with the result we're trying to create for users, not a feature wish list. Our product development is shaped by three disciplines we carry from public health practice: results-based accountability (what outcome are we actually trying to achieve?), human-centered design (build in small increments, learn, adapt), and continuous quality improvement (track every piece of user feedback, prioritize based on what we hear most). Every release reflects what we heard from users. You can read a deeper dive in Built by Practitioners, Not Just for Them: How Arclet Approaches Product Development.

Your voice matters

We are always looking for ways to improve Arclet’s content library. If you see something missing, have suggestions, or want to provide feedback, we’d love to hear from you.

Get in Touch

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