Abstract: Epidemiologists and medical investigators deployed to disease outbreaks and public health investigations involving illness and deaths often need to communicate the journalists, local officials, and community members. This chapter identifies and describes the communication approaches and principles needed for effective communication. Drawing from professional experience and published research, this chapter provides epidemiologists and medical investigators overviews and guidance on risk perception and communication, examples of messages used to facilitate trust during an outbreak response, working with the media, and effective messaging.
Topic: Disease outbreaks
Grant Awarded: Misinformation Vulnerabilities among Elderly during Disease Outbreaks
Abstract: This study aims to identify the nature of, and find potential solutions to the kinds of vulnerabilities that misinformation imposes on older adults during infectious disease outbreaks with a demographic that is shown to be especially vulnerable to this problem. Situated in Bangalore, India, the study will comprise of two phases: formative research that will use automated social media analytics of news coverage to identify key themes of misinformation that spread during previous infectious disease outbreaks in India, and a factorial survey experiment to test how older adults and their children respond to different levels of misinformation presented in different information formats.