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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Marsha Vanderford, PhD¹, Teresa Nastoff, BSN², Jana L. Telfer, MA³, and Sandra E. Bonzo, MLIS¹. (1) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, 4770 Buford Highway, MS K65, Atlanta, GA 30341, 770 488-4265, mev7@cdc.gov, (2) National Center for Health Marketing, Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30329, (3) National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, Century Center III, Century Center Plaza, Atlanta, GA 30329

Adapting Health Messages to Meet the Storm: Risk Communication Lessons from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

In response to the extensive destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina and related public health threats, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deployed more than 1000 staff to affected areas and to CDC's emergency operations center. Among them were members of CDC's Emergency Communication System (ECS). This paper describes ECS strategies and tactics as health communications specialists addressed a full range of risk communication challenges. They issued warnings and prevention for clear and current dangers at the beginning of the response; communicated potential threats; provided reassurance for the public on risks that were small, but where concern was high; and called attention to hazards that were less exotic but more. The extensive and sustained nature of the Hurricane Katrina disaster required that CDC's risk communication focus on a wide range of public health issues including threats from environmental hazards, injury prevention, infectious disease prevention, and chronic disease management. This paper focuses on the two of most challenging areas of risk communication for CDC during Hurricane Katrina: adaptation and phasing of health messages for diverse audiences, locations, and circumstances.

Learning Objectives:

Attendees at the session where this paper is presented will
• Identify challenges that face federal and state organizations as they adapt population-based health messages to local emergency circumstances
• Understand the process of moving from low-literacy health messages to no-literacy (pictograms) in the development of emergency health messages
• Identify the phases of emergency communication response

Keywords: Emergency, Risk Communication

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered