How effectively do drug recall notices reach patients? Do regulators, drug companies and medical professionals adequately monitor and evaluate health risk communication? What expectations does the public have about timely and transparent communication about health-product risks? How are changes in media and communication technologies shaping the marketing of health products and the risks those products may pose?
A multidisciplinary panel of experts, including Carleton University’s Josh Greenberg, director of the School of Journalism and Communication, has just released a report that addresses these and related questions. Produced by the Council of Canadian Academies, the report, Health Product Risk Communication: Is the Message Getting Through? synthesizes the available evidence on health-product risk communication strategies, tools and evaluation methods. It also addresses the barriers and facilitators to more effective risk-communication practice and evaluation.
“The council brought together an international group of experts in risk communication drawn from academia and civil society over the course of two years,” said Greenberg. “We reviewed the evidence about drug-risk communication and risk-communication evaluation. This is extremely important at a time when more Canadians are accessing and sharing health news and information online, and when more of that information presents conflicting claims about product efficacy and safety.”
Effective risk communication is an important instrument for improving public health. Globally, regulators devote their attention and resources to communicating the risks associated with health products, which range from mild side effects to life-threatening defects and adverse drug reactions. While regulators use similar tools to communicate health-product risks (e.g., package inserts, public advisories), the effectiveness of these tools is rarely fully evaluated. Without such evaluation, it is difficult to know what types of communication tools work best, for whom, under what circumstances and why.
“This report is important in that it draws from such a diverse panel of experts,” said Greenberg. “I’m proud of the work we contributed because it is totally evidence based and driven by a shared interest in contributing to more robust policy and more responsible health communication. It isn’t speculative and it isn’t shaped by a particular agenda,” he added.
“The timing of the report is also important as health-risk communications is evolving with changes in media and communication technology. These changes have shaped a huge paradigm shift in how risk is communicated from experts to the public. Dialogue and relationship building is far more important now than in the past. I was glad to make contributions to how the panel thought about the challenges and opportunities that changes in media technology present to how health risk is communicated.”
The report is intended as a tool to inform evaluation and decision-making within government departments and agencies responsible for health-risk communication. The report may also be of interest to Canadians as they seek to remain informed about how to best communicate, interpret and understand the risks associated with health products.
The full report is available on the council’s website at: www.scienceadvice.ca.
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