Getting Our Attention

This past week I completed an online training program (12 modules) on Environmental Public Health Tracking. It was very interesting and I am now familiar with several databases and systems that track things from air quality to disease outbreaks, industry emissions and controls to emergency room visits for carbon monoxide poisoning.  It would be an indulgence for me to toy with those things just now but it is good to see that the systems are in place and the data is available.

Also in the training was a segment on risk and health communications.  For example, one might want to make a community aware of a health risk that has arisen after a toxic chemical leached into the water supply. Another type of communication could be to encourage persons to switch from high fat foods because of the obesity or heart disease issue.  There are many more examples, but the notes I highlighted referred to the comments in the training manual about factors that sway or mobilize an audience.  Most of this I have studied as a health educator - but you have not studied it - so I share these points verbatim from the course.  And in reading them you may see why the job of a public health advocate can be so challenging!

Choice

People are more afraid of risks that others impose on them than of risks they choose to take. People might be more afraid of suffering respiratory damage from a hazardous substance in their office or school than of suffering respiratory damage from smoking, even if the risk from smoking is much higher.

Dread
People generally are more afraid of risks that could cause a painful or grotesque death as opposed to risks that cause death in more common ways. For example, people are more afraid of dying in a plane crash or of radiation poisoning than they are of heart disease.


Catastrophic vs. Chronic
People are more afraid of risks that could kill many people all at once than they are of risks that could kill many people over time. Terrorist attacks or plane crashes inspire more fear than do heart disease, stroke, or car accidents, even though the latter might be much more likely to actually happen.

COURSE: Environmental Public Health Tracking 101 – Part 3 ACTIVITY NUMBER: WB 1811

PRESENTED BY: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Environmental Health Association
FUNDED BY: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  The course I took can be found at this website.