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Risk Communication

The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) was launched in February 2014 to advance a world safe and secure from infectious disease threats, to bring together nations from all over the world to make new, concrete commitments, and to elevate global health security as a national leaders-level priority.

GHSA acknowledges the essential need for a multilateral and multi-sectoral approach to strengthen both the global capacity and nations' capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious diseases threats whether naturally occurring, deliberate, or accidental – capacity that once established would mitigate the devastating effects of Ebola, MERS, other highly pathogenic infectious diseases, and bioterrorism events.

An essential part of keeping countries safe and secure from infectious disease threats is enabling people to make decisions to protect themselves and those around them. This may include educating the public about what symptoms to look for, how and when to report illness in family members, what to do when a family member may be or is diagnosed as infected, and how to prevent disease and infection in the first place. This is sometimes known as Risk Communication.

From the risk manager's perspective, the purpose of risk communication is to help residents of affected communities understand the processes of risk assessment and management, to form scientifically valid perceptions of the likely hazards, and to participate in making decisions about how risk should be managed. Risk communication tools are written, verbal, or visual statements containing information about risk.

In this Trending Topic, the Compass provides a variety of proven tools for risk communication (listed below under "Tools") and examples of risk communication efforts in specific country settings (listed below under "Examples.")

We welcome your contributions to this effort.  Please contribute your own materials!


A young girl at a celebration for the lifting of an Ebola quarantine in Kambia, Sierra Leone. © 2015 Samuel Boland, Courtesy of Photoshare

Resources

  • Tools
  • Examples

Global Health Security Agenda Website

The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) was launched in February 2014 to advance a world safe and secure from infectious disease threats, to bring together nations from all over the world to make new, concrete commitments, and to elevate global health security as a national leaders-level priority.  

View Resource

Joint External Evaluation Tool

A joint external evaluation (JEE) is a voluntary, collaborative, multisectoral process to assess country capacities to prevent, detect and rapidly respond to public health risks whether occurring naturally or due to deliberate or accidental events.

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Communicating Risk in Public Health Emergencies

The recommendations in these guidelines provide overarching, evidence-based guidance on how risk communication should be practiced in an emergency. The recommendations also guide countries on building capacity for communicating risk during health emergencies.

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GHSA Action Packages

The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) was launched in February 2014 to advance a world safe and secure from infectious disease threats, to bring together nations from all over the world to make new, concrete commitments, and to elevate global health security as a national leaders-level priority.

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Emergency Preparedness and Response Training

An online course which covers several aspects of emergency risk communication.

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CERC Manual for Emergency Risk Commuication

CDC’s Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) manual is built around psychological and communication sciences, studies in issues management, and practical lessons learned from emergency responses.

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Avian Influenza Emergency Risk Communication

Emergency risk management is usually based on a team approach to decision-making, response and control. In this guide, this team-based approach is applied to the scenario of an avian influenza outbreak, leading the user through the steps necessary to first plan and develop a response and then to secondly, implement the plan.

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COMBI Toolkit for Behavioural and Social Communication in Outbreak Response

This toolkit is primarily intended for risk communication, developmental communication and  health promotion/education personnel working in multidisciplinary teams to investigate and respond to disease outbreaks, but can also be useful for epidemiologists, clinicians, and public health officers who need to understand the local contexts and dyn
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Field Workbook for COMBI Planning Steps in Outbreak Response

This field workbook supports the implementation of the interagency (FAO, UNICEF, WHO) “Communication for Behavioural Impact (COMBI): A toolkit for behavioural and social communication in outbreak response”. 

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The SBCC Emergency Helix

The SBCC Emergency Helix describes a communication blueprint for strengthening community stability, health system adaptability and the evolution toward resilience.

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Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Quick Guide

Crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) )is the strategy used to provide information that allows an individual, stakeholders, or an entire community to make the best possible decisions during a crisis emergency event. The purpose of a public health response to a crisis is to efficiently and effectively reduce and prevent illness, injury, and death and return individuals and communities to normal.

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Crisis and Outbreak Communication Pandemic Flu and Other Disasters

This presentation is a step by step guide for understanding crisis/outbreak communication, communication crucial to managing a crisis, explaining the WHO Outbreak Guidelines, and working with the media.

Download

Preparing for Disaster: A PILLARS Guide

PILLARS Guides aim to increase confidence among group members, so that they can successfully manage change within their own situation without the need for outside help.

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Cholera Outbreak: Assessing the Outbreak Response and Improving Preparedness

This document offers a framework for the assessment of a cholera outbreak response, which will help to:
 
  • Provide a comprehensive overview of the outbreak response
  • Pinpoint the main strengths and weaknesses of the response
  • Improve preparedness for and response for future outbreaks
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Plague Infographic

This infographic displays information about the causes, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of plague as well as providing an explanation of the history of the disease.

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Ebola Preparedness Implementation Kit

This Ebola Communication Preparedness Implementation Kit (I-Kit) provides national and local stakeholders, as well as program managers, with key considerations and a roadmap for instituting and implementing critical, relevant, practical and timely communication for responding to the threat of an Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak. 

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Open WHO

OpenWHO is WHO’s interactive, web-based, knowledge-transfer platform offering online courses to improve the response to health emergencies. OpenWHO enables the Organization and its key partners to transfer life-saving knowledge to large numbers of frontline responders.

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How to Design SBCC Messages

In social and behavior change communication (SBCC), a message is a statement containing key points of information that a program wants to communicate to an audience to encourage behavior change. Message design is the process of connecting insights about the priority audience with key information the audience needs to know in order to make the change the program desires. Successful, well-designed messages are simple, memorable, easily understood, culturally appropriate and meaningful to the audience. Their design stems from a clear creative brief that outlines what the communication intervention aims to achieve.

Basic Cholera Prevention Messages

This fact sheet offers basic cholera prevention messages for health communication projects:

Key Messages for Social Mobilization and Community Engagement in Intense Transmission Areas

The exponential rise of Ebola cases and deaths in West Africa has created an urgent need for practical messaging and engagement of individuals, families and key stakeholders in a community.
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New Communication Strategies for Preventing Misinformation

The main purpose of this document is to offer recommendations to prevent the emergence and spread of misinformation in the course of a major infectious disease outbreak, and how misinformation can be corrected.

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Communicating Benefits, Risks and Uncertainties in a Non-judgmental and Unbiased Way

This resource, created by the Patient Information Forum, provides a kind of checklist on how to communicate risks carefully and thoughtfully to patients.

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Responding Faster than Ever in the Hot Zone

Uganda

Uganda is considered a "hot zone" for infectious diseases. Uganda is particularly vulnerable to epidemics because of its unique location near the Congo Basin; its close connection with other countries; the risk from natural disasters; and the ever-present threat of evolving pathogens or antimicrobial resistance.

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Earthquake Emergency Special Hello Bhanchhin Aama Radio Program

Nepal

Suaahara was a five year (2011-2016) project funded by USAID aimed to improve the nutritional status of women and children in 41 districts of Nepal. Suaahara developed and implemented the integrated Bhanchhin Aama (“Mother knows best”) cohesive platform which involved multiple sectors (Nutrition, Agriculture, WASH, Health Service Promotion, Family Planning), linked Suaahara partners, government and others, and had multiple messages for every target audience (pregnant women, husbands, newly married women, mothers-in-law, etc.). 

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Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Tool Kit

United States

This toolkit, created by the California (US) Department of Health, provides detailed resource materials to assist in effectively managing and communicating during an emergency or crisis.  

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Nepal Earthquake Materials

Nepal

These materials were produced in response to critical health concerns following the 2015 earthquake.  

Download

Post Earthquake Emergency Flyer

Nepal

This is a flyer regarding water, sanitation and hygiene, reproduced during the post-earthquake period in Nepal in the spring of 2015.

Download

Post-Earthquake Communications Plan

Nepal

The purpose of this plan, developed shortly after the devestating earthquakes in Nepal in the spring of 2015, is to communicate health risks with communities directly affected by the earthquake in 14 priority districts by focusing on interpersonal communications, dissemination of information, and community mobilization through community volunteers, including frontline health workers and civil society organizations for the immediate six month period May-October 2015.

Download

Suaahara Earthquake Health Awareness Poster

Nepal

Suaahara was a five year (2011-2016) project funded by USAID aimed to improve the nutritional status of women and children in 41 districts of Nepal.

Download

Concept Note on Communication Strategy for the Ebola Crisis for Countries in a East and Southern Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

This document focuses on quickly developing an effective communication strategy for addressing Ebola. It does not address other aspects of handling Ebola such as treatment, quarantine control, infection prevention, medical staff training, monitoring, logistics and epidemiology.

Download

Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) Considerations: Ebola Response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Congo, Democratic Republic

This document is intended to be used to guide risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) work which is central to stopping the outbreak and preventing its further amplification.

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Radio Spots - Nepal Earthquake Recovery

Nepal
HC3 Nepal developed a set of 8 health Public Service Announcements (PSA), in coordination with Suaahara and National Health Education Information Communication Center.   The 15 second spots reinforce critical health behaviors including hand washing, latrine use, importance of clean water, etc.  
 
Download

Communication Strategy and Workplan for Avian Influenza

Middle East, North Africa, and Greater Arabia
Egypt

The goals of this communication strategy are:

  • Improve knowledge of certain practices such as the risk of children playing / handling poultry and hygienic means to dispose poultry wastes.
  • Increase the percent of the public who believe that they could be infected by AI (i.e. increase the perception of possible risk for individuals) and / or who think that their children could be at serious risk if they handle poultry.
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Ebola Preparation and Response Scenario

Sub-Saharan Africa

This document was used in a workshop in West Africa, to help program managers learn how to develop preparedness and response plans for a potential Ebola outbreak.  It includes an outbreak scenario and potential actions and responses by many parties to the outbreak.

Download

Risk Communication and Community Engagement Preparedness and Readiness Framework: Ebola Response in the Democratic Republic of Congo in North Kivu

Congo, Democratic Republic

The goal of this framework is to provide an overview of how Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) resources and activities need to be prepared for across different response pillars among provinces and countries neighbouring North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Message Guide for Ebola Communication

Liberia

This document compiles current information and key messages about the Ebola outbreak in Liberia to inform activities designed to raise awareness, mobilize communities, and promote safe behaviors to stop the spread of Ebola in Liberia.

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Ebola Key Messages

This poster describes what Ebola is, its signs and symptoms, how it is spread, how to prevent it, and how to treat it.

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Anna Helland

This website is made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Breakthrough-ACTION Project, supported by USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, under Cooperative Agreement #AID-OAA-A-17-00017 with the Johns Hopkins University.

Breakthrough-ACTION is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (JHU∙CCP). The contents of this website are the sole responsibility of JHU∙CCP. The information provided on this website is not official U.S. Government information and does not necessarily represent the views or positions of USAID, the United States Government, or The Johns Hopkins University.

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