COVID-19 Infodemic Management: Risk Communication and Community Engagement Challenges (WHO)

What Will You Learn?

• Risk communication and community engagement: Overview: By the end of this module, you will be able to: define risk communication and community engagement; explain the key challenges for RCCE during public health emergencies; identify several RCCE tactics for managing uncertainty; identify several elements of public trust related to agencies responding to public health emergencies, and identify several mechanisms to use for “listening” and engaging stakeholders and communities.
• Influencing risk perception about COVID-19 to encourage healthy behaviors:
• By the end of this module, you should be able to: describe the concept of risk perception as it relates to health emergencies; identify how and why risk perception varies, and the repercussions of different levels for adherence to public health recommendations; identify the cognitive and emotional/contextual characteristics of health threats that influence risk perception for at-risk groups and scientific experts, and describe how different characteristics of health threats can be used in messaging to influence risk perceptions.
• Sustaining COVID-19 recommended behaviors for extended periods: By the end of this module, you should be able to: describe the limits of risk perception and fear appeals to sustain behavior change over extended periods of public health emergencies, like COVID-19; identify how “status quo bias” can make it harder for people to follow new or different behaviors; describe specific tactics for making recommendations easier to perform that can help sustain new, protective behaviors; explain how nudging works to encourage adherence to public health recommendations; identify several types of groups that have not consistently followed COVID-19 health protection measures, and explain the challenges of persuading them to follow recommendations.