A Systematic Review of Literature on Effectiveness of Training in Emergency Risk Communication

Abstract

Although disaster preparedness training is regularly conducted for a range of health-related professions, little evidence-based guidance is available about how best to actually develop capacity in staff for conducting emergency risk communication. This article presents results of a systematic review undertaken to inform the development of World Health Organization guidelines for risk communication during public health and humanitarian emergencies. A total of 6,720 articles were screened, with 24 articles identified for final analysis. The majority of research studies identified were conducted in the United States, were either disaster general or focused on infectious disease outbreak, involved in-service training, and used uncontrolled quantitative or mixed method research designs. Synthesized findings suggest that risk communication training should include a focus on collaboration across agencies, training in working with media, and emphasis on designing messages for specific audience needs. However, certainty of findings was at best moderate due to lack of methodological rigor in most studies.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the assistance of our student research assistants, Laura Boutemen and Maria Briceno, and UCF librarian Richard Harrison for their contribution to the organization of the literature search. Laura Boutemen, Abdulsamad Sahly, Min Liu, and Min Tong gave valuable assistance with the French, Arabic, and Chinese literature searches.

Funding

This project was funded by the World Health Organization, Department of Communications (Contract PO 201393190 WHO Registration 2016/645053-0 and Contract PO 201539532).

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the World Health Organization, Department of Communications (Contract PO 201393190 WHO Registration 2016/645053-0 and Contract PO 201539532).