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Chapter 10 - Evaluating Emergency Risk Communication and Engaging in Public Education for the Next Emergency

from Part III - Communicating and Planning after a Health Emergency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2025

Kathleen G. V. Melville
Kathleen G. V. Melville
Affiliation:
Tulane University School of Medicine, Louisiana
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Summary

This chapter outlines practical ways emergency risk communicators can use evaluation throughout a health emergency to inform and improve emergency risk communication messaging strategies and activities. The chapter starts with a basic orientation on program evaluation and its relevance to emergency risk communication. Next, the chapter provides an in-depth look at 16 communication evaluation activities that emergency risk communications can use throughout a health emergency. Then the chapter describes how organizations learn after health emergencies and how organizational learning can inform community resilience and public education. Next, the chapter outlines current theoretical research approaches to evaluating emergency risk communication and practical ways to apply this research during a health emergency. The chapter highlights the ADKAR model for organizational change management, and a student case study uses the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication framework to analyze how the Georgia Department of Health communicating during the e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) outbreak. End-of-chapter reflection questions are included.

Keywords

program evaluationevaluationformative researchfocus groupssurveysemergency risk communication evaluationCERCCERC analysiscase studyEVALIADKARorganizational learning

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Risk Communication in Public Health Emergencies
Practical Guidance Rooted in Theory
 , pp. 257 - 280
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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