Toward a Post-Pandemic World Lessons from COVID-19 for Now and the Future: Proceedings of a Workshop (2022) / Chapter Skim
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3 Addressing Uncertainties in Pandemic Communication
3 Addressing Uncertainties in Pandemic Communication
Pages 21-36
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From page 21... ...
The rapidly evolving situations, emerging variants, and changing response actions and public health measures have resulted in much confusion for the general public and overall uncertainty about what actions to take (Porat et al., 2020; Tyson and Funk, 2022)
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From page 22... ...
. Key principles of CBPR include drawing on community strengths and assets through collaboration, promoting a colearning and empowering process, and addressing health from both positive and ecological perspectives.
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From page 23... ...
Viswanath's research team has been looking at how different populations engage with health information, how it is accessed, and how they process it when there is a constant deluge of information. Because of the preexisting relationship the research team had built with a community, individuals within the community approached them to ask what they should do about the confusing information surrounding COVID-19.
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From page 24... ...
Pielke presented a diagram of how the response framework was set up early on in the Trump administration, saying there was "no high-level advisory mechanism for pandemic response." Although there were several related advisory committees, he added, nothing was at the highest level. This is in contrast to the setup in Japan, where the government overhauled its pandemic response after the 2009 H1N1 outbreak and created science advisory processes.
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From page 25... ...
When the concept of "flattening the curve" first emerged, she teamed up with an animator to create a graphic that could be easily understood and shared. While they initially used it to show how an individual's choices could contribute to a response, they changed course quickly to make it a graphic demonstrating the collective response based in the elimination strategy, and emphasizing the importance of a long-term response, and not letting up on the public health measures too soon.
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From page 26... ...
The government is now taking a much more intentional approach to meeting indigenous communities and helping them get equal access to the vaccines. Trust and Engagement During Outbreaks in Sierra Leone Lawrence Sao Babawo, School of Community Health Sciences in the Department of Nursing at Njala University, focused his remarks on his experiences during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014–2015.
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From page 27... ...
Thomas, Center for Health Equity at the University of Maryland, set the stage for his presentation by saying health disparities and underlying chronic disease conditions must continue to be a priority effort to reduce and ultimately eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities. Additionally, the equity approach means addressing the social, cultural, and environmental factors beyond the biomedical model.
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From page 28... ...
as legitimate reason for vaccine hesitancy. This 40-year experiment is egregious because once penicillin was widely available, treatment was denied to the men in the Tuskegee Study.4 Today the public health community is faced with that legacy, Thomas said, and needs to use every government lever to ensure people of color and minorities actually obtain needed treatment.
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From page 29... ...
Summarizing some of the responses, Thomas said the main categories of motivation included keeping family safe, keeping themselves safe, and keeping the community safe. Concluding, he added that his team's rapid response training program is currently being delivered to more than 936 barbershops and salons across the country, where they are also hosting vaccine clinics.
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From page 30... ...
The specialists working in the program have been very successful thus far in reaching the target population, but most of the program is run through various grant funding, so Thomas hoped for more sustainable funding mechanisms to be able to expand and continue the program to help more in need. UNDERSTANDING MISINFORMATION Part of the challenge with influencing healthy behaviors and successfully implementing public health measures is the variability in available and verifiable information.
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From page 31... ...
Factors that may play a role include reduced distribution, reduced cost of producing and distributing information -- including false information -- and the incentives to spread that information for political or economic gain. Additionally, there is the challenge of the speed with which that distribution can outrun counterefforts.
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From page 32... ...
Nyhan commented on the significant partisan divide over the COVID-19 pandemic response, saying that many people think misinformation is a key contributor to this, but there are numerous aspects to it. When thinking about misinformation as something to address to affect behaviors like vaccine hesitancy, he emphasized one of the key findings of communications research: the importance of using trusted sources.
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From page 33... ...
Christine Prue, associate director for Behavioral Science at the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, emphasized the role of social and behavioral scientists.7 Social and behavioral scientists are important in helping communities understand scientific information by contextualizing it.
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From page 34... ...
Similarly, Nyhan surmised that polarizing narratives from various political parties helped spread misinformation. The panel discussed the importance of local news sources.
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From page 35... ...
DiResta said that people no longer trust top-down scientific communication methods, and instead using local entities or civil society groups that rely on scientists as a source would be more efficient. Prue agreed and added that establishing these local communication pathways would be best achieved by incorporating social and behavioral science in organizations.
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