By Jamie Rogers
Gary Kreps, Director, Center for Health and Risk Communication. Creative Services Photo.
You might notice the product warnings on a bottle of pain relievers or information sheet that comes with a prescription medication, but are you actually reading them and making decisions based on that information?
That’s what a recent study wanted to find out. A George Mason University professor was part of a multidisciplinary expert panel that examined the effectiveness of informational inserts in drug packaging and public health advisories, in a study released Tuesday.
George Mason Distinguished Professor Gary Kreps, Director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication, was part of the Council of Canadian Academies’ Expert Panel that conducted the study, “Health Product Risk Communication: Is the Message Getting Through?”
Read the entire study on the Canadian Academies’ website here.
The panel took a close look at how agencies like Health Canada and its counterpart in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), can measure the effectiveness of health risk communications.
Examples of product health risks include known side effects from medications, medical device malfunctions and product defects.
Agencies in the United States and abroad devote much time to communicating these sometimes life-threatening health risks to the public, but haven’t dedicated the same amount of time to determining if these communications are effective for all audiences, according to the study.
The panel spent time identifying best practices for communicating with selected audiences—the public, people with specific illnesses, and health care providers—about specific health risks, Kreps said.
The larger goal of the study was to encourage government agencies to develop the best strategies for communicating health risk information to specific audiences by conducting formative, process and summative evaluation research, he said.
This includes conducting needs analyses to identify the health issues that different audiences need more information about and what they already know, as well as the best way to communicate with them, Kreps says.
Formative research helps risk communicators develop appropriate and effective messages and communication strategies, while process research tests the effectiveness of draft messages and different communication channels for delivering health risk information to target audiences so the messages can be refined to be optimally effective.
“Summative research is conducted to evaluate the overall influences and benefits of risk communication efforts,” he said. “’What did the risk communication effort achieve?’ ‘Did it improve public health?’ ‘Was it cost effective in achieving its goals?’”
In the United States, the FDA has the Strategic Plan for Risk Communication, which incorporates a multidimensional understanding of risk. The FDA has already set goals related to risk communication. These goals include increasing the use of plain language so that target audiences can understand the message, the quality and timeliness of messages and the number of highly credible websites linking to FDA communications.