Communication is not merely a matter of passing information from one person to another. Just as important as the message itself is how the message is formulated, and who are the parties involved. This is particularly true in case of an infectious diseases outbreak, when proper risk communication can really make the difference in terms of number of lives saved.
Mandeville KL, O'Neill S, Brighouse A, Walker A, Yarrow K, Chan K. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2014 Mar;68(3):197-203.
Background: Concerns have been raised over competing interests (CoI) among academics during the 2009 to 2010 A/H1N1 pandemic. Media reporting can influence public anxiety and demand for pharmaceutical products. We assessed CoI of academics providing media commentary during the early stages of the pandemic.
Gesser‐Edelsburg A, Shir‐Raz Y. Targeting Ebola International Congress 2015: Scientific Bases & Applications, Pasteur Institute, Paris, May 28‐29, 2015.
Gesser-Edelsburg A, Shir-Raz Y, Bar-Lev OS, James JJ, Green MS. Targeting Ebola International Congress 2015: Scientific Bases & Applications, Pasteur Institute, Paris, May 28‐29, 2015.
As the health editor of a prominent UK newspaper like The Guardian, Sarah Boseley has often faced the challenge of communicating uncertainty when dealing with health issues. This is even harder in the case of infectious disease outbreaks, when not all the information is always available from the beginning. Nevertheless, media should keep on trying to explain the public that sometimes even scientists and public health authorities have to say: “We don’t know”.
An infectious diseases specialist in London, Geraldine O’Hara spent two months in Sierra Leone with Médecins sans Frontières last year, at the peak of the Ebola crisis. While working in an Ebola treatment centre, she was asked to share her experience on Radio 4, a national radio station in UK. We met her at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, where she told us about how she learnt such a new job and how she realized that real-life stories might greatly improve science communication.
