How Prepared Are State and Local Health Departments for Emergency Risk Communication?
Risk communication means presenting accurate, credible, actionable, and timely information to the public during public health emergencies. The recent H1N1 (“swine flu”) outbreak in April 2009 provided an opportunity to test state and local public health department capabilities for risk communication. In April, 2009, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency in response to the outbreak of H1N1. RAND researchers assessed how effectively state and local health departments communicated information via the Web about this emergency to their constituents within 24 hours of the declaration. The analysis found that nearly all state health departments delivered timely, accessible information to their constituents, covering all the necessary topics. Forty-seven state-level public health department sites provided at least some information specific to the H1N1 outbreak within 24 hours of the alert. Forty-three state-level sites presented informa
