ECOM stands for “Effective Communication in Outbreak Management: development of an evidence-based tool for Europe”. The ECOM project is a research project under the EU 7th Framework Programme and runs from February 2012 till February 2016. By bringing together various disciplines, the project aims to go beyond the current knowledge in order to develop an evidence-based behavioural and communication package for health professionals and agencies throughout Europe in case of major outbreaks of infectious diseases.

ECOM's goal is reached through the following specific objectives:

• to assess the time-dependent influences of epidemiology and risk communication including media content on human behaviour during the A/H1N1 pandemic;
• to analyse, using social marketing principles, vaccination behaviour, audience segmentation, and vaccination service delivery;
• to analyse knowledge, attitudes, risk perception, vaccination non-response and reasons for resistance during past epidemics;
• to apply Discrete Choice Experiments to determine acceptance of preventive measures in the case of epidemic outbreaks;
• to integrate the key findings of the studies under the first four objectives, to determine critical factors, groups, and media to be addressed in the development of effective strategies;
• to test behavioural interventions and communication strategies tailored to different target audiences;
• to finalize and disseminate a package of evidence-based tools that can be tailored to individual European countries.