Risk Communication in Public Health Emergencies

Kathleen G. V. Melville, Ph.D. is an expert in emergency risk communications with seventeen years' experience working in state, local, and federal public health agencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic she worked in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Joint Information Center. She also teaches disaster communication at Tulane University.

1. Why you need to care about emergency risk communication; 2. Pre-crisis planning is necessary for public information and emergency communications: leveraging what you've got; 3. Identifying who needs to know what and when: it's not a surprise what your audiences need to know; 4. Addressing the information needs of public and medical community during a public health emergency; 5. How to get the message out: understanding all of your communication channels and when to use them; 6. Initial messages during a health emergency: addressing uncertainty and creating trust with the public; 7. Maintenance messages during a health emergency: how to protect the public's health and debunking misinformation; 8. Communicating during long public health emergencies: creating health communication campaigns; 9. Pivoting from crisis management to recovery: communicating the end of a health emergency; 10. Evaluating emergency risk communication and engaging in public education for the next emergency; 11. Effective communication during a health emergency: the role of spokesperson and working with the media; 12. Crisis leadership: staying steady on unsteady ground. Index.