Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

The complexity of COVID-19 has meant that the risks have often been difficult to predict and understand, thus creating uncertainty and a challenge for those responsible for public risk communications. "When scientific uncertainty appears in public settings, it could reduce the perceived authority of science" (Zehr, p.11). Effective communication of uncertainty is essential, to ensure that individuals and communities are well-informed, are better able to make decisions about their well-being and respond to/mitigate the impacts of risk. Consider:

• Create a visualization of risk, to generate a deeper and more relevant understanding of the facts and insights often concealed in abstract data, e.g.; 'The risk characterisation theatre', a visualisation approach using a seating chart (like those used when booking seats in a theatre) which "visually displays risk by obscuring a share of seats that correspond to the risk" (see example below)
• This approach generates a visual of the likelihood of the risk, and enables a visual communication of rare risks that are often challenging to represent and communicate effectively
• This approach also enables an individual to relate a risk with a level and within a context that they can naturally associate to. By not stating exact figures, this approach tackles the "big issue" of uncertainty in risk
• Other examples of visualizations of risk include; displaying the impact of "long COVID" as places in a bus, e.g. "a figure such as 22% of patients discharged from hospital after COVID-19 reporting hair loss could be depicted as 11 individuals on a bus full of 50 people who have left hospital after receiving care for the virus". This is a scenario that anyone familiar with a bus can easily imagine. The data becomes immediately less abstract.

You can view a visualization of this concept in the last page of this article here..

Reference: Rifkin, E. and Bouwer, E. (2007) The Illusion of Certainty: Health Benefits and Risks. Boston, MA: Springer US.

To ensure that statements and information given to the public are consistent, while recognising some regional differences in content. Consider a communication strategy that clearly lays out:

• What will be said
• To whom will it be said
• Who will say it

Consider what existing relationships the news outlets have with organisations and the public and how the media can become a welcomed partner in communications strategies.

Reference: Emergency Planner, Canada