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. 2020 Mar 21;8(1):64.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare8010064.

Effective Risk Communication for Public Health Emergency: Reflection on the COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Outbreak in Wuhan, China

Liwei Zhang  1 , Huijie Li  1 , Kelin Chen  2
Affiliations

Effective Risk Communication for Public Health Emergency: Reflection on the COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Outbreak in Wuhan, China

Liwei Zhang et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

Risk communication is critical to emergency management. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the effective process and attention points of risk communication reflecting on the COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) outbreak in Wuhan, China. We provide the timeline of risk communication progress in Wuhan and use a message-centered approach to identify problems that it entailed. It was found that the delayed decision making of the local government officials and the limited information disclosure should be mainly responsible for the ineffective risk communication. The principles for effective risk communication concerning Wuhan's outbreak management were also discussed. The whole communication process is suggested to integrate the accessibility and openness of risk information, the timing and frequency of communication, and the strategies dealing with uncertainties. Based on these principles and lessons from Wuhan's case, this paper employed a simplified Government-Expert-Public risk communication model to illustrate a collaborative network for effective risk communication.

Keywords: COVID-19; outbreak management; public health; risk communication.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Timeline of official reports about infected cases by the Wuhan Health Commission. Source: This timeline is a processing of data from Website of Wuhan Health Commission and a generalized report and in-depth investigation from China Business Network [10,11]. Note: Blue represents “No report”; Red represents Wuhan and Hubei’s Congress; Date in yellow represents confirmed infected case of medical worker.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Government–Expert–Public Risk Communication model.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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