Search

Effective risk communication is essential for government and health authorities to effectively manage public health during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Understanding the factors that influence people's perceptions of crisis-related risk messages is critical to identify gaps and inequalities in population risk communication. Using a longitudinal survey of a representative adult sample, we examined risk communication about COVID-19 during April-June 2020 in Australia across sociodemographic groups especially the at-risk groups, accounting for and exploring the effects of risk attitudes and media engagement. Our findings showed that individuals who were younger, more left-wing, more risk-tolerant, and had a current or a history of mental disorders perceived risk communication of the Australian Government to be lower quality. On the other hand, greater consumption of information from televisions was found to be associated with more positive attitudes toward government risk communication. Our results also revealed the importance of effective and high-quality risk communication in gaining the public endorsement of various public health directions. We discuss the implications of results in terms of the development of effective public communications that lead to health-protective behaviors and effectively scaffold public understanding of risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is driven by concerns over communicative justice and the author's earlier research finding that only a patchy framework of laws and policies guides decisionmaking for Australian governments' multilingual public communications. The article investigates the additional guiding role of international law, specifically the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and recent commentary by international organisations, alongside an original, empirical case study of Australian governments' COVID-19 communications. In analysing the Australian case study in light of the international guidance, the article concludes that although Australian COVID-19 communications were available in a relatively high number of languages, they were characterised by inefficiencies and limited community input or strategic planning, leaving Australia arguably falling short of progressively realising its right-to-health obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of an epidemic or pandemic presents significant challenges for public health communication. The shifting and uncertain nature of an epidemic or pandemic necessitates a dynamic communication strategy. However, negotiating uncertainty and information gaps can be challenging for both government and media. This commentary focuses on two aspects of selected Australian media commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic: media commentators' negotiation of gaps in the available information about the pandemic and commentators' assessment of perceived initial inconsistency in the government's public health messaging. It analyses how a perceived inability to reconcile gaps in the expert advice can be interpreted by media commentators as an indication of public health communication failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective While children's magazines 'blur the lines' between editorial content and advertising, this medium has escaped the calls for government restrictions that are currently associated with food advertisements aired during children's television programming. The aim of this study was to address significant gaps in the evidence base in relation to commercial food messages in children's magazines by systematically investigating the nature and extent of food advertising and promotions over a 12-month period. Method All issues of Australian children's magazines published in the calendar year 2009 were examined for references to foods or beverages. Results Approximately 16% of the 1678 food references identified were portrayals of branded food products (or food brands). However, only 83 of these 269 were clearly identified as advertisements. Of these 269 branded food references, 86% were for non-core (broadly, less healthy) foods, including all but seven of the advertisements. Conclusions It appears that recent reductions in televised promotions for non-core foods, and industry initiatives to reduce the targeting of children, have not carried through to magazine advertising. This study adds to the evidence base that the marketing of unhealthy food to children is widespread, and often covert, and supports public health calls for the strengthening of advertising regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Next of kin who are aware of the deceased's organ donation wishes usually will honor those wishes, while next of kin who are unaware of these wishes typically withhold consent for posthumous donation. Encouraging individuals to communicate or register their organ donation wishes is therefore important. Using a sample of 409 participants, the current study sought to develop a profile of Australian adults who had communicated their organ donation wishes to family members. Christian participants and those who had a higher income were more likely to have communicated their donation wishes. Conversely, participants were less likely to have communicated their donation wishes if they were unregistered and undecided/opposed to organ donation, unregistered but willing to donate, or fearful of death. Finally, whether participants had communicated, registered, or communicated and registered their donation wishes was associated with their age, religion, attitude toward organ donation, and recall of media content about organ donation. Messages encouraging the communication of organ donation wishes to family members should therefore be targeted toward those individuals who are most likely to be receptive toward enacting this behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential for general practitioners to promote screening for cervical cancer and describes one example of an effective general practitioner-based (GP-based) programme to improve community screening rates. The GP-based programme was designed to improve general practitioners' involvement in recruiting women in their communities to have Pap smears. The aim was to raise doctors' awareness of the fact that many women are not adequately screened, to encourage them to consider why these women are not being recruited, to assist them to develop strategies to overcome these problems, and to support them in the use of these strategies by providing information and resources, feedback on performance, and peer support. The effectiveness of the GP-based programme was assessed as part of a multi-centre trial to compare the differential effectiveness of three community-based strategies to promote screening for cervical cancer: a television campaign, a television campaign combined with personally addressed letters sent to all women in the community, and a television campaign combined with the GP-based programme. Each intervention was delivered to three postal regions in New South Wales, Australia, and time-series data on Pap smear rates were obtained. Three control regions were included for comparison. Of all three strategies, the combined television campaign and GP-based programme had the most potential, with up to an additional 8% of previously unscreened women being screened during each quarter of the combined television campaign and GP-based programme. This compares with screening of 2–4% of previously unscreened women in association with television combined with letters, and only 1–3% of previously unscreened women when television was used alone. However, the impact of the GP-based programme was highly variable. This variation in effectiveness points to a need for further research to determine the general practitioner, community and programme factors associated with programme success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the Mindframe National Media Initiative in Australia and its goal of assessing and intervening against copycat behavior associated with news media portrayals of suicide cases in newspapers and television. The authors discuss the Media Monitoring Project and the development of suicide reporting guidelines documented in the 2002 report "Reporting Suicide and Mental Illness." The applicability of the research to the broader health communication research field is discussed.