Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #110388

Deborah C. Glik, ScD, Allison Drury, MPH, and Clint Cavanaugh, MD. School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles, P.O. Box 951772, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1772, 310 206 9548, dglik@ucla.edu

Heightened fears of terrorism and disasters have stimulated creation of risk communications messages for the general public. In this presentation, we detail how messages about a possible botulism outbreak were developed, tested, and redeveloped to adhere to audience information needs and processing capacities. Findings reported are based on formative research and evaluation that used multiple sets of focus group interviews implemented over a two year period. Based on initial formative research, botulism messages were designed to address survival concerns, then meaning, then assurance about organized responses to the event. Messages were then assessed for readability and cultural competency and rewritten. While the sequence of messages tested in a second round of focus group interviews were adequate, as messages developed we shifted from describing botulism as a food borne illness to one which could be spread by aerosolized means. This shift caused audiences to become confused: airborne transmission meant to many that botulism was an infectious disease. These findings forced us to retreat to more simple descriptions of botulism as a form of food poisoning. Using newer learning theory models, we interpret findings to show how persons conceptual and logical frameworks held in long term memory conform to certain heuristics. In this case foodborne diseases are distinct from infectious diseases. Ignoring how people organize pre-existing health information when trying to communicate new information is a prescription for failure. Assessing audiences' conceptual frameworks allows messages to be framed so that they do not compete or confuse but can be assimilated.

Learning Objectives:

• 1)To learn current practice for development and pretesting of risk communication messages.
• 2)To understand how cognitive learning theories inform us about people’s pre-existing cognitive maps.
• 3)To observe risk communication messages about botulism that worked and those that did not work.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation