Officials need to explain how their decisions are made and why they change over time. Transparency demonstrates respect for the public’s right to know and its ability to understand. Officials can prepare the public for expected changes that will occur as part of the pandemic and frame official statistics, recommendations, and policies as adaptive, rather than erratic.

Being transparent can improve credibility, which is essential for effective communication. One critical strategy is to partner with community-serving organizations that can provide trusted channels, tailor messages, and hear community concerns. Greater trust in information sources is associated with greater adherence to recommendations.

In an open society, with multiple information sources, health officials are vulnerable to criticism if they exaggerate risks in order to motivate action or underplay them in order to reassure the public. Members of the public report that they want to know the truth, even it is bad. In fact, providing negative information can increase trust. Acknowledging uncertainty can actually build trust and does not undermine confidence in the information or its source.

Public health officials must recognize and respect individuals’ autonomy in making decisions for themselves and their families. Empowering that autonomy means making the information people need to exercise it authoritative, comprehensible, and accessible.

Preparatory research is essential for all communications, especially when sharing unfamiliar information with diverse individuals from different backgrounds. Rigorously developed messages can make potentially complex scientific information clear. When officials make a recommendation (e.g., wearing masks, returning to school), they need to explain its rationale and acknowledge individuals’ right to choose.

Effective dissemination also requires preparatory research and can benefit from community partnerships to make messages accessible.

Public health officials must acknowledge the deep emotions and practical challenges that can accompany the decisions individuals are now asked to make. When decisions are difficult to make and carry out and their outcomes are uncertain, communications need to acknowledge those realities, which demonstrates empathy and sympathy for decision makers’ circumstances.

Narratives have been found effective in other health settings, resulting in better recall and fewer counterarguments. COVID-19 stories that contextualize risks, without resorting to fear tactics, can help people assess risk by envisioning possible situations and creating mental models for how to behave in them. Narratives that acknowledge the challenges that individuals face, and their capabilities, can show empathy, emotion, compassion, and concern. These narratives can also address the weariness that many people feel with the prolonged pandemic.

Public health officials can foster public engagement by partnering with trusted community organizations that support two-way communications, helping to convey health information and hear individuals’ needs.

A two-way process between officials and community leaders who are trusted and credible includes:

1. continuous community engagement: establishing two-way community channels and hearing multiple voices;
2. engagement across multiple channels: using multiple channels to accommodate those who cannot attend in-person meetings, those who cannot access the internet, those who are incarcerated, and those who speak other languages;
3. timeliness: monitoring and anticipating community needs; and
4. trustworthiness: maintaining transparency and providing information when problems are encountered.

Strategies can also include acknowledging the public’s contributions and sacrifices in the collective response to the pandemic and tailoring the content and delivery method of information to the audience’s social contexts, such as group identities, age, gender, resources, and norms.