Cargando…

Progress in public health risk communication in China: lessons learned from SARS to H7N9

BACKGROUND: Following the SARS outbreak, the World Health Organization revised the International Health Regulations to include risk communication as one of the core capacity areas. In 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Disease Detection [GDD] program began collaborati...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Frost, Melinda, Li, Richun, Moolenaar, Ronald, Mao, Qun’an, Xie, Ruiqian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6696672/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32326919
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6778-1
_version_ 1783444306320687104
author Frost, Melinda
Li, Richun
Moolenaar, Ronald
Mao, Qun’an
Xie, Ruiqian
author_facet Frost, Melinda
Li, Richun
Moolenaar, Ronald
Mao, Qun’an
Xie, Ruiqian
author_sort Frost, Melinda
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Following the SARS outbreak, the World Health Organization revised the International Health Regulations to include risk communication as one of the core capacity areas. In 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Disease Detection [GDD] program began collaborating with China to enhance China’s risk communication capacity to address gaps in the SARS communication response. This article describes tangible improvements in China’s public health emergency risk communication capacity between the SARS and H7N9 outbreaks; documents U.S. CDC GDD cooperative technical assistance during 2006–2017; and shares lessons learnt to benefit other countries and contribute to enhance global health security. METHOD: A questionnaire based on the WHO Joint External Evaluation tool [Risk Communication section] was developed. A key communications official from the China National Health Commission [NHC] completed the questionnaire retrospectively to reflect China’s capacity to manage communication response before, during and after the outbreaks of SARS in 2003, influenza H1N1 in 2009, and influenza H7N9 in 2013. A literature search was also conducted in English and Chinese to further substantiate the results of the questionnaire completed by NHC. RESULTS: China demonstrated significantly improved risk communication capacities of pre-event, during event and post event responses to H7N9 when compared to the SARS response. China NHC improved its response through preparedness, availability of dedicated staff and resources for risk communication, internal clearance mechanisms, standard operating procedures with national response parties external to NHC, rumor management, communication with international agencies and consistent messaging with healthcare and private sectors. Correspondingly, the perceived level of trust that the public had in the NHC following outbreaks rose between the SARS and H7N9 response. CONCLUSION: Risk communication capacities in China have increased during the ten years between the SARS outbreak of 2003 and the H7N9 outbreak of 2013. Long-term risk communication capacity building efforts in bilateral collaborations are uncommon. The U.S. CDC GDD project was one of the first such collaborations worldwide. The lessons learned from this project may benefit lower and middle-income countries as they build their national emergency risk communication capacity. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6778-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6696672
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher BioMed Central
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-66966722019-08-19 Progress in public health risk communication in China: lessons learned from SARS to H7N9 Frost, Melinda Li, Richun Moolenaar, Ronald Mao, Qun’an Xie, Ruiqian BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Following the SARS outbreak, the World Health Organization revised the International Health Regulations to include risk communication as one of the core capacity areas. In 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Disease Detection [GDD] program began collaborating with China to enhance China’s risk communication capacity to address gaps in the SARS communication response. This article describes tangible improvements in China’s public health emergency risk communication capacity between the SARS and H7N9 outbreaks; documents U.S. CDC GDD cooperative technical assistance during 2006–2017; and shares lessons learnt to benefit other countries and contribute to enhance global health security. METHOD: A questionnaire based on the WHO Joint External Evaluation tool [Risk Communication section] was developed. A key communications official from the China National Health Commission [NHC] completed the questionnaire retrospectively to reflect China’s capacity to manage communication response before, during and after the outbreaks of SARS in 2003, influenza H1N1 in 2009, and influenza H7N9 in 2013. A literature search was also conducted in English and Chinese to further substantiate the results of the questionnaire completed by NHC. RESULTS: China demonstrated significantly improved risk communication capacities of pre-event, during event and post event responses to H7N9 when compared to the SARS response. China NHC improved its response through preparedness, availability of dedicated staff and resources for risk communication, internal clearance mechanisms, standard operating procedures with national response parties external to NHC, rumor management, communication with international agencies and consistent messaging with healthcare and private sectors. Correspondingly, the perceived level of trust that the public had in the NHC following outbreaks rose between the SARS and H7N9 response. CONCLUSION: Risk communication capacities in China have increased during the ten years between the SARS outbreak of 2003 and the H7N9 outbreak of 2013. Long-term risk communication capacity building efforts in bilateral collaborations are uncommon. The U.S. CDC GDD project was one of the first such collaborations worldwide. The lessons learned from this project may benefit lower and middle-income countries as they build their national emergency risk communication capacity. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6778-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2019-05-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6696672/ /pubmed/32326919 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6778-1 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Frost, Melinda
Li, Richun
Moolenaar, Ronald
Mao, Qun’an
Xie, Ruiqian
Progress in public health risk communication in China: lessons learned from SARS to H7N9
title Progress in public health risk communication in China: lessons learned from SARS to H7N9
title_full Progress in public health risk communication in China: lessons learned from SARS to H7N9
title_fullStr Progress in public health risk communication in China: lessons learned from SARS to H7N9
title_full_unstemmed Progress in public health risk communication in China: lessons learned from SARS to H7N9
title_short Progress in public health risk communication in China: lessons learned from SARS to H7N9
title_sort progress in public health risk communication in china: lessons learned from sars to h7n9
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6696672/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32326919
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6778-1
work_keys_str_mv AT frostmelinda progressinpublichealthriskcommunicationinchinalessonslearnedfromsarstoh7n9
AT lirichun progressinpublichealthriskcommunicationinchinalessonslearnedfromsarstoh7n9
AT moolenaarronald progressinpublichealthriskcommunicationinchinalessonslearnedfromsarstoh7n9
AT maoqunan progressinpublichealthriskcommunicationinchinalessonslearnedfromsarstoh7n9
AT xieruiqian progressinpublichealthriskcommunicationinchinalessonslearnedfromsarstoh7n9