Risk communication in public health and health security

Abstract

Risk communication is a core capacity under the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (2005) and an important part of modern public health practice. However, while international legislative frameworks set the scope of risk communication, there is a demand for increasing and improving evidence and skills in risk communication research, policy and strategy development, evaluation of practice and sustainable capacity building. This cumulative habilitation describes the major contributions to the field of risk communication in public health and health security both at a thematic, content level of risk communication research policy and practice and at a broader methodological level. It introduces the new conceptual paradigm of risk communication that moves risk communication from being a technical capacity to convey health risk information to a targeted audience to a governance approach with three strategic axes of information (gathering, assessing and sharing), communication (strategies, key messages and means of communication) and coordination (at various administrative levels). It introduces a new system to understand risk communication practice by providing a matrix of risk communication activities, such as information (listening), communication (relationship-building) and coordination (supportive environments) across the lifecycle of an event, e.g. outbreak, before, during and after. Adopting this new perspective can generate innovative insights, as demonstrated in the field of antimicrobial resistance. The new paradigm and its methodology can also support strategy development at health policy level and facilitate the assessment of public health security. The Marburg Biosafety and Biosecurity Scale (MBBS) is a framework for rational risk assessment and risk communication and offers a new metric to assess biosafety and biosecurity that can also guide capacity building in these areas. Evaluation of public health interventions is essential to monitor progress, identify and assess areas for improvements and demonstrate useful outcomes and overall impact. The Earlier – Faster – Smoother – Smarter approach is an original framework to monitor, evaluate and guide risk communication activities for earlier detection, faster response, smoother coordination and smarter legacy that were applied in two case studies (Ebola, earlier detection). Risk communication in public health and health security has important thematic outputs with significant outcomes and impact. The applied, new methodology is a social laboratory format that is social, experimental and systematic and has the potential to become a genuine methodological category. Both, content and methodological approaches, contribute to a framework for a sustainable implementation of the new risk communication paradigm in public health research, policy and practice.