Engaging communities to communicate risks
The Risk Communication Program uses a bidirectional, community-engaged approach to share important information during health emergencies.
Overview
Mayo Clinic's Risk Communications Program studies, develops and carries out strategies to effectively reach vulnerable and under-resourced groups with relevant healthcare information during crises and emergencies. It aims to bridge gaps between healthcare and research organizations and the communities these institutions aim to serve. Risk communications researchers work closely with community partners. The team grounds its approach in community-engaged research to ensure that crucial health information is delivered to the people who need it most, at the most critical times.
Roots in community engagement: Rochester Healthy Community Partnership
In 2004, Mayo Clinic researcher Irene G., Sia, M.D., M.S.; Julie Nigon, program manager for the Hawthorne Education Center in Rochester, Minnesota; and Mayo Clinic nurse Jenny A. Weis, M.A.N., joined with multiple community partners to found the Rochester Healthy Community Partnership (RHCP) in Rochester, Minnesota. The partnership is a community-engaged research organization that addresses health disparities among immigrants and refugees through community-based participatory research.
Pandemic response: The RHCP-CERC framework
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, RHCP members and academic partners observed that valuable and trustworthy COVID-19 information was available but was not reaching immigrant communities. Recognizing its unique position to bridge this gap, the organization formed a community-based COVID-19 task force. The task force adopted the crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) framework put forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) but added a bidirectional approach to reach the vulnerable populations in question. Through this "RHCP-CERC" framework, the task force created and shared public health messages, enhanced connections to existing resources, and helped incorporate community voices in regional pandemic mitigation policies.
The framework was highly successful, reaching thousands of people in the Rochester area. It was later adopted by three other groups conducting community-engaged research:
- FAITH! a community-based participatory research partnership of more than 100 African American churches in urban and suburban Minnesota.
- A coalition based out of the University of Mississippi Medical Center that serves rural African American communities in Mississippi.
- HOPE2, a group representing over 15 faith-based organizations in the Northeast Florida region focused on Hispanic health.
Read more about this work from Mayo Clinic News Network:
Mayo researchers, minority communities team up to combat COVID-19 health disparities
Preparing for the future: Pandemic toolkit
Based on their successful implementation of the RHCP-CERC framework, the four groups developed a "pandemic toolkit" of effective CERC practices to have at the ready when under-resourced communities are faced with future pandemics or other public health emergencies. Key community and academic members from each of these groups met virtually over months in a collaborative and equitable way, guided by principles of community-based participatory research, to systematically develop the toolkit.
The COVID-19 Pandemic Toolkit is now freely available for health departments, community organizations and community-engaged partnerships to use during future infectious disease outbreaks and other public health-related emergencies. Additional resources include a culturally tailored pandemic message library with message maps and message content that may be adapted for future use.
The Mayo Clinic Risk Communications Program continues to study the effectiveness of this toolkit in responding to other infectious diseases and public health emergencies as well as its use among disparate groups and populations. The program also gives this toolkit to other community-engaged groups for use in response to public health and other emergencies, particularly among populations at risk of health disparities.
Funding
Mayo Clinic provided funding for this research through the Center for Clinical and Translational Science and the Division of Public Health, Infectious Diseases and Occupational Medicine.
Pandemic toolkit
Rodney Washington, Ed.D., of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, provides a history and overview of the COVID-19 Pandemic Toolkit.
The Pandemic Toolkit and Site Walk-Through
Rodney Washington: At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear
that accurate information was not reaching most health disparity populations.
In March 2020, Rochester Healthy Community Partnerships, RHCP, created a multi-stakeholder COVID-19 task force to address these gaps seen in the community. The task force adopted the CDC Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication, CERC, and introduced a bi-directional component that engages the community through communications leaders.
Community-engaged partnerships are uniquely positioned to operationalize pandemic risk communication frameworks among vulnerable populations. Community -engaged crisis and emergency risk communication has the potential to reduce COVID-19 disparities through shared creation and dissemination of public health messages, enhanced connection to existing resources and incorporation of community voices in regional pandemic mitigation policies.
The success of this project led to the adoption of the framework by partners in other geographic areas of the nation. There was a strong desire among groups who used the framework to develop a toolkit that can be used in the future, locally and nationally, by other communities that can be adapted for current and future pandemics, as well as other health emergencies in diverse contexts.
This actionable toolkit is a guide for community groups, local health departments, and others on shared creation and dissemination of public health messages, enhanced connection to existing resources, and incorporation of community voices in regional pandemic mitigation policies with a goal of meeting the needs of the community, particularly for populations affected by and at risk of health disparities. We're excited to share this toolkit with you and hope
you find it helpful.
Rochester Healthy Community Partnership (RHCP). http://rochesterhealthy.org