Bird Flu: Communicating the Risk

Most people have already heard a little about bird flu. But people face a host of other problems, and except for public health officials and poultry farmers, few are gearing up for action about H5N1 [the virus that causes the flu]. Yet.

Sandman, Peter M. and Jody Lanard. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical

A Case Study of Health Risk Communication: What the Public Wants and What it Gets  

The task of informing the public about various health risks is fraught with many problems. It is essential to overcome them if risk communication is to be improved. In 1989, the National Research Council (NRC) released a report that is important for many reasons. In particular, it helped establish a conceptual framework for risk communication and identified a research agenda to improve risk communication practices. One area of need identified by the report was better use of case studies to understand, e.g., 'how people react to different types of messages and channels; [and] what their actual concerns, frustrations, and data needs are' with regard to particular health risks.

Trauth, Jeannette M. Franklin Pierce Law Center (1994). Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical

Health and Safety Information for Specialized Vocational Audiences  

Using examples from commercial fishing and farming, this article shows how models of health beliefs and risk communication can inform the creation of health and safety materials and campaigns for specialized vocational audiences. These models state that risk communication efforts must balance strong statements of risk with equally strong statements of ways to reduce or avoid risk if they are to motivate change. Audience research can help communicators address attitudes that impair workers’ perceptions of risk, as well as workplace practices, norms, and conditions that the limit the methods that can be used to reduce risk.

Freeman, Krisandra S. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Writing>Biomedical>Risk Communication

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

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

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 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

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