The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) recently hosted a talk evaluating how well journalists and health officials communicated H1N1 information to the public.
One of the speakers, Dr. K “Vish” Viswanath, runs a lab at HSPH dedicated to researching health communication. Viswanath highlighted some particularly difficult aspects of transmitting the H1N1 story:
- Health journalists have to straddle two cultures: the world of medical complexities and uncertainties; and the world of deadlines and commercial pressures.
- “More information does not necessarily mean more communication”: even if scientists and journalists do an exemplary job during a health crisis, the internet makes it impossible to control the spread of misunderstandings and misinformation.
One interesting positive lesson: Viswanath noted that whether or not the subtleties of the H1N1 story were getting through to the public, people seemed to be following recommended behaviour — if it was easy to follow. He tracked sales of hand sanitizer during the pandemic, for example, and saw that they went up significantly:
[Dr. Viswanath, screenshot from lecture on H1N1 communication]
Finally, Viswanath made one more very important point: different social groups — whether based on “class, race, ethnicity, or language” — differ widely in their access to information and where they go to look for it. This “communication inequality” is hugely significant during a public-health crisis.
Not everyone, for example, has equal access to online information — or the skills to learn from it or act on it. As he put it, while “it’s exciting to see social media being exploited [...] not everybody uses the internet.” If media and public-health departments rely too much on the web, he says, this can actually widen disparities in access to reliable information. In a survey done in April 2009, only 19% of people reported getting “the most information” about H1N1 online. The lesson here: local and ethnic news sources in traditional media — whether broadcast or paper — remain critical; it’s not just all about Twitter and Facebook.
I asked Viswanath whether he feels there’s a dearth of experienced health reporters (see this post). He said yes, that because of cuts in journalism, reporters are covering multiple beats and not necessarily able to stay on the health beat over the course of their careers. He hasn’t had a chance, however, to study this in relation to the H1N1 story specifically.
You can learn lots more from Dr. Viswanath in this video of the talk.
