Communicating includes sending and receiving messages. Effective communicators take time to learn the values, attitudes, beliefs, and preferences of their intended audiences. By understanding who makes up the audience, a communicator can develop messages that resonate with the audience, motivating them to take action. For public health emergency risk communicators this means creating messages that educate and motivate people to protect their health during an emergency. This chapter explains how to identify audiences through audience segmentation by identifying risk variables such as age, health status, and geographic location. Stakeholder management theory provides critical insights into how to work and communicate with partners, stakeholders, and the public during a health emergency. Key information about public health laws including libel, slander, HIPPA and Right to Know is included, analyzing how public health laws impact emergency risk communication. Descriptions of public health powers for state and local health departments are included. A student case study analyzes the Jackson, Mississippi, Water Crisis using the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication framework. Reflection questions are included at the end of the chapter.

Health agencies that receive federal funding are required to have public information plans in place that meet specific functional criteria. Emergency risk communicators need to build upon those functional requirements of a crisis communication plan to ensure the plan can be used as a support for strategic communications. Communicators can do this by identifying segmented audiences and communication channels, and developing key messages in the precrisis phase as outlined by Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) principles. This chapter seeks to build upon the work health departments have already done and to offer insights into how to optimize and streamline communication plans that can be tailored to a health agency’s needs and resources. It explains why communication planning is a critical step in emergency risk communications and how to combine federal funding requirements and the CERC framework to ensure a functional emergency risk communication plan. The chapter outlines how to build sustainable crisis communications teams and how to test messages to assess whether your organization’s emergency risk communication messages will resonate with audiences. The chapter includes mini-case study examples of the Oregon Douglas Complex Fire and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome emergency responses to deepen learning related to adapting communication plans and to simple message testing with community stakeholders. A student case study analyzes the 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment using the CERC framework. Reflection questions are included at the end of the chapter.

Health emergencies create unique information needs for different audience segments. This chapter outlines the differences in information needs between the general public and the medical community. Information needs of the medical community relate to scientific guidance, data reporting, health risks, personal protective equipment, interventions, and treatments. By analyzing communications used during a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Clinical Outreach and Community Activity team webinar on COVID-19 vaccines, readers can identify the unique needs of the medical community. Epidemiologists and emergency risk communications can cocreate data-driven and actionable emergency messages when they collaborate. This chapter offers insights into how epidemiologists and emergency risk communicators can cocreate messages on health risks and interventions and leverage data graphics to help explain health risks to the public. The chapter also describes how health care practitioners can use and apply the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) framework within health care organizations to communicate to staff and patients. A student case study analyzes the US Ebola health emergency using the CERC framework. Reflection questions are included at the end of the chapter.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted individuals worldwide, regardless of their geographic location, religious or political beliefs, occupation, or social standing. People’s experiences were directly impacted by lockdown measures, physical distancing, masks, vaccine recommendations, or illness of self or friend or family member, as well as by how their local and national elected officials and public health leaders managed and communicated about the pandemic. As people went into lockdown, they went online and found a proliferation of information both true and false about the pandemic. The constant deluge of online information, the new and evolving outbreak, and the worldwide impact created a complex health emergency.  The COVID-19 pandemic brought emergency risk communication to the forefront of every health agency in the United States, from city to county to state to federal levels of government. This chapter provides an overview of public health preparedness; explains how Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) is different from day-to-day public health communication; summarizes the CERC framework and phase-based messaging; and outlines how risk perception impacts the way people process information about health threats. A student case study analyzes a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak using the CERC framework. Reflection questions are included at the end of the chapter.