Health Risk Communication

With government getting more involved with healthcare and organizations collecting information about the risks of some diseases, there is a plethora of information about heath risk that must be made accessible to the general public.

Albing, Bill. KeyContent.org (2004). Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical>Civic

Hurricane Katrina's Impact on UPA Members

Hurricane Katrina illuminated UPA's sense of community this past month when the UPA Board of Directors acted quickly to attempt to contact our members who are/were located in the significantly affected regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We received responses from several.

Mitropoulos-Rundus, Dave. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Usability>Risk Communication>Southern US

Is Risk Communication Nothing but Green-Washing?  

Risk-Based Corrective Action (RBCA), a process for cleaning up contaminated sites, is not widely understood. To better communicate with the public about RBCA, a research team sought to measure people’s comfort with the role of risk in decision-making by administering a risk-response survey to inhabitants of two US towns. The survey’s most unusual finding was that people seem more comfortable with environmental risks than with other kinds. Because the survey’s wording probably affected the outcome, the finding raises issues about the responsibility of technical communicators in developing the tools and language of responsible environmental communication.

Hart, Hillary. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Risk Communication>Environmental

Lessons in Crisis Preparedness for Communication Pros

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy, university leaders—indeed all organizational leaders—are evaluating their crisis preparedness. Those leaders who actively seek to employ a comprehensive, all-hazard preparedness plan—not just one that deals with a troubled-turned-violent-person—will emerge best equipped to safeguard their students, employees and others.

Doyle, Jerry. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Communication>Risk Communication>Crisis Communication

Making a Crisis Worse: The Biggest Mistakes in Crisis Communication

All businesses are vulnerable to crises. You can't serve any population without being subjected to situations involving lawsuits, accusations of impropriety, sudden changes in company ownership or management and other volatile situations on which your audiences—and the media that serves them—often focus. The cheapest way to turn experience into future profits is to learn from others' mistakes. With that in mind, the following examples of inappropriate crisis communication policies, culled from real-life situations, will provide a tongue-in-cheek guide about what not to do when your organization faces a crisis.

Bernstein, Jonathan. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Risk Communication>Crisis Communication

Managing Project Risk  

Risk management is as much art as science. Being aware of what risks are and how they can affect a project can be the difference between success and failure. Three elements of risk management—regardless of project size or scope—will influence success: understanding what risks are; developing and detailing categories of risk; and building a mitigation plan into the project plan. This approach to risk management benefits the project manager by bringing into focus—as early as possible in the project life cycle—many potential detriments to project success. When folded into a repeatable project management methodology, these processes can translate into dollars as the probability of meeting calendar and budget goals increases.

Bierbower, James G. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Project Management>Risk Communication

Message Severity Levels: How Much Is Enough?

This article describes how we investigated software message severity levels using surveys in a series of usability tests and how the results helped us create a standard set of severity levels. These findings can also be applied to other messages.

Schwirzke, Martin and Mayuresh Ektare. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Risk Communication

Mistakes Can Be Costly

In the aircraft industry, a number of factors have converged to highlight the importance of maintenance manuals.

Between the Lines (2007). Articles>Documentation>Engineering>Risk Communication

Nontraditional Communication about Health Risks: Hired Farm Laborers  

This paper presents a variety of nontraditional risk communication techniques developed by faculty at the University of Washington Department of Environmental Health and its partner agencies. The common thread of their projects is to communicate with migrant agricultural workers about pesticide hazards through techniques such as home parties, educational outreach, a health adviser network, Hispanic theater, fluorescent imaging, and icon-based health histories. Initial results indicate behavior may change as a result of these forms of risk communication. Similar techniques could be adapted to other populations that are difficult to reach with traditional risk communication methods.

Hall, Katherine J. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical

Organizing for Effective Communication During a Crisis

Little of existing risk communication advice addresses the management of the communication function during a crisis as opposed to before a crisis. Drawing from my own career experiences, I think it important to address the former.

Freimuth, Vicki S. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Risk Communication>Crisis Communication

The Outrage Industries: The Role of Journalists and Activists in Risk Controversies

One of the best established principles in the risk perception and risk communication field is that awareness of other people's outrage increases one's own outrage.

Sandman, Peter M. psandman.com (2006). Articles>Risk Communication>Journalism

Politics, Sound Science and the Precautionary Principle

William Lowrence’s Of Acceptable Risk (1976) began the forthright treatment of the subjective elements of risk assessment. Maintaining that 'risk' was scientifically objective, his discussion of 'safety'—as socially acceptable risk—acknowledged the political nature of the overall evaluation. But even a rigid determination of a clear risk—say of injury from skydiving—cannot tell us why only some people will agree to jump from an airplane.

Bereano, Philip L. Harvard University. Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical

Preparing for a Crisis: Tips on Writing a Crisis Communication Plan  

A crisis communication plan details how a company will operate in a crisis. It should include sections on potential crises and strategies for managing a crisis using a crisis management team. The plan should include details on the team's functions, training for the team members and the company spokesperson, and use of a crisis management center and a media center. The plan should address implementation of practice drills and an evaluation of each drill and actual crisis.

Molony, S.T. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Risk Communication>Rhetoric>Crisis Communication

Preparing Your Organization for Pandemic Flu

In the past few weeks, articles appeared on the inside pages of The New York Times and other news sources, with reports from Indonesia of human-to-human infection by avian flu, such as Elisabeth Rosenthal's article "Human-to-Human Infection by Bird Flu Virus Is Confirmed." Another article by Donald McNeil in the Times reported that mortality rates for avian flu are higher in young people, which was also the case in the devastating Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

Matalucci, Paul. Communication World Bulletin (2008). Articles>Management>Risk Communication>Biomedical

The Presentation of Safety Information in Product Manuals  

Technical communicators may be asked to design and develop safety information for a product manual. During this process, technical communicators can add value to the presentation of safety information. In addition to adhering to a manufacturer’s internal guideline for the content and formatting of safety information, other factors can be considered as well. This paper presents the following factors: (1) an overview of common failure-to-warn allegations, (2) an analysis of current practices in automotive owner’s manuals for presenting safety information, and (3) an update on a new ANSI Z535 consensus standard for the presentation of safety information in product manuals.

Wisniewski, Elaine. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Documentation>Risk Communication>Technical Writing

Public Rhetoric and Public Safety at the Chicago Transit Authority: Three Approaches to Accident Analysis    

This article compares three rhetorical approaches to accident analysis: materialist, classical,and constructivist. The focal points for comparison are the two accident reportsissued by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)—reports that attempted(and failed) to persuade the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to change a problematicpolicy about rail communication alongside its technology for rail communication. Thecentral question the article asks is, How can rhetorical theory help explain the CTA'sinaction, which ultimately led to property damage, injury, and death? Classical andconstructivist approaches, emphasizing rational deliberation between equals, on onehand, and the social construction of technical knowledge between professionals, on theother, offer plausible explanations for what went wrong. But only the materialistapproach appears capable of discerning the ideological nature of the CTA's resistance tothe NTSB's recommendations.

Coogan, David. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Risk Communication>Policies and Procedures>Government

Risk Communication in the Context of Consumer Perceptions of Risks

One goal of risk communication on food safety issues (among many) is communication between risk assessors and risk managers and the average citizen. This dimension includes both communication with the citizenry as a whole, through the mass media and other widely disseminated information, and communication with consumer organizations that participate in the risk analysis/risk management process.

Groth, Edward III. Consumers Union (1992). Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical

Risk Communication—Lessons from Communication Science  

This article explores risk communication from the communication science perspective, discusses three theoretical risk communication models: theory of reasoned action, extended parallel processing model, and dialectical discourse model; explores the complexities of risk communication messages; suggests guidance for risk communicators; and provides a working bibliography of recent risk communication literature.

Zimmerman, Donald E. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Risk Communication

Risk Communication: A Critical Component in Every Crisis

Having been deployed as a crisis communicator to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, immediately after the New Orleans levees failed last year, I am frequently asked to talk about the experience and my opinion of why so much went wrong so quickly in the aftermath. My quick response is "Too little too late."

Alvey, Robert J. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Risk Communication>Crisis Communication

Risk Communication: A Guide to Regulatory Practice  

Risk communication is central to making decisions. It enables people to participate in deciding how risks should be managed.

Health and Safety Executive (2004). Articles>Risk Communication>Government>United Kingdom

Risk Communication: A Neglected Tool in Protecting Public Health  

A June 2003 publication from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

Harvard University (2003). Articles>Risk Communication

Risk Communication: Working With Individuals and Communities To Weigh the Odds

Risk communication is a complex, multidisciplinary, multidimensional, and evolving process of increasing importance in protecting the public's health. Public health officials use RC to give citizens necessary and appropriate information and to involve them in making decisions that affect them-such as where to build waste disposal facilities.

Prevention Report (1995). Articles>Risk Communication

Safety Risks in Mechanical Engineering

The cause for the careless handling of possible dangers is not so much unwillingness, but rather the lack of know-how. There are no standardised and well-documented processes that are simple to implement and use.

Walther, Andreas. TC-FORUM (2002). Articles>Risk Communication>Engineering