Science Communication Capstone Project
Northeastern University, Journalism & Environmental Science 2020
Exploring the research:
Science communication in the literature
Although science communication as a practice is not new – scientists have been communicating their research findings to the public since at least the early 19th century – the idea that we can study how it works just as we can study other scientific disciplines is a much more recent idea. Every day, new peer-reviewed papers are published in a wide variety of scientific journals exploring different bullet points under science communication’s very large umbrella.
Understanding exactly what science communication is and how it can be most effective is obviously critical to its success. But often, there is a disconnect between the people doing the science communication and the people involved in the academic discipline studying science communication, where terms social scientists might use in evaluating its success are lost on those who are actually doing it. To bridge that gap, this page explores takeaways from some recent literature on important science communication topics.
Please use this table of contents if you would like to skip to a specific section: ​
Introduction
“What makes your audience tick?” Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia posed this question in their 2017 analysis of science communication on social media, published in Computers in Human Behavior (Hwong 2017). In the paper, they said answering that question was one of the most important necessities to create impactful science communication – and they had the data to back it up. The paper shared the results of two studies looking at what made science communicators on social media so successful, specifically in the field of space science.
They toyed with a few reasons why space science might be particularly engaging for social media users: It’s inherently pretty, for one, because it can feature some amazing photos of our universe (Hwong 2017). But that didn’t answer the question why NASA’s release of pictures and messages from the first close-up flyby of Pluto in 2015 reached more than 38 million people on Twitter and 29 million people on Facebook (Hwong 2017). What made it so enticing, and could those techniques be applied outside of space science?
To try and answer that question, the researchers turned to machine learning. Essentially, without getting into the finer details, a computer learned what makes science communication social media posts effective by reviewing popular space science posts, and then attempted to predict the popularity of other posts.
They found a couple interesting things. On Facebook, posts with a photo were more likely to be popular, and so were posts that caused angry or anxious responses. On Twitter, visual elements were the most important and emotions had less to do with it. (There are a lot of other really cool results in the paper). Overall, though, the researchers said there were significant differences in language use between effective and ineffective messages, and they were able to name them: Anger, authenticity, visual descriptions, and a tentative tone (Hwong 2017). And although they explicitly say that those four features apply only to the space science research they did, reading that list definitely resonates far beyond space.
This type of research matters because it can make science communicators more effective, and effectively communicating science could be the difference between climate disaster and action, between sickness and positive health outcomes, and between extinction and conservation.
But there are other problems, too, more specifically the stigma that scientists often feel getting involved in any kind of advocacy, even if it’s about their research area. Luckily, researchers at MIT published a paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production in partnership with researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and investigated this phenomenon extensively. They discovered that when scientists perceive that their peers participate in or support public engagement, they are more likely to participate themselves (Hu 2018). Seems like peer pressure is good for something – but while it might change their willingness to participate, it didn’t influence the amount of effort that scientists put into doing it well.
The reason for that, they say, is because scientists want to feel like they are doing something meaningful that will have an impact. That feeling is what causes scientists to increase the effort they are exerting in their public engagement projects (Hu 2018). The study specifically focused on China, which has a very collectivistic culture, and the researchers say they don’t know if the findings can be applied in individualistic cultures. However, it’s a powerful case for the importance of efficacy and impact in science communication.
We need good science communicators today more than ever. In 2019, the Pew Research Center released a study on what Americans know about science. Americans actually did pretty well, with the majority answering most questions correctly. But there were clear disparities: Americans with more education scored higher, and so did white Americans compared with Americans of color. In 2016, a different Pew survey found that partisanship also plays a role in how people understand their own scientific knowledge.
How do we fix these disparities? The takeaways in this literature are a great place to start.
Science in the schools: Evaluating science education methods
“Earth frowns. With a face of green and blue, the planet’s mood is blue, too — as unblinking eyes cast a somber stare.
Colored with crayons, this drawing is the schoolwork of Maya, a fifth grader from the United States. At the top sits a title: “Greenhouse Gas Effect.” Piercing Earth’s atmosphere, sharp arrows represent solar radiation, which for the most part remain trapped as heat by a ring of gases aptly shaded green. While a patchwork of flags from around the world makes for a vibrant backdrop, it can’t detract from the dismal mood. To punctuate the point with urgency, there’s a red explosion with all caps in black: “EXTREME!” Even the sun seems sad.
Kids like Maya are growing up in a world set to face the worst of climate change. As dire warnings pour out from research scientists and indigenous peoples around the globe, many U.S. teachers don’t mention our planet’s fever in the classroom — and think tanks and fossil fuel companies that deny the scientific consensus on climate promote junk lessons to instructors who do.”
Like Urevig's article goes on to explain, developing curricula for children to teach them about complex science topics like climate change is a huge effort. But scientists have been evaluating and writing about the best ways to teach science, from the impact of family engagement to the use of augmented reality technology. Let’s get started.​​
Evaluating strategies and technologies
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One study, conducted by researchers in Turkey and at Utah State University in the United States, evaluated the effectiveness of a single early childhood curriculum, the Primrose Balanced Learning curriculum (Saçkes 2019). This type of study is very rare – according to these researchers, only one other study evaluating the effectiveness of a single science curriculum had been done before publication of their paper, and it had found that curriculum had no effect.
On the contrary, these researchers found that the Balanced Learning curriculum had a positive effect, significantly improving the science scores of the students. The researchers also highlight the importance of evaluating curriculum effectiveness and provide a detailed explanation of their methods to be replicated by other scientists evaluating different curricula.
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The paper also explored the gender gap in science achievement. It cited previous studies, where teachers were shown to disproportionately invite boys into scientific discussions or encourage them to use scientific reasoning. As a result, early childhood science education was more likely to impact boys – a problem the Balanced Learning curriculum did not have (Saçkes 2019). And, probably unsurprisingly, students with more interest in science did even better.
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One way to get more students interested in science could be with augmented reality technology. Researchers from Ataturk University in Turkey explored the effect of AR on middle school students' science education outcomes (Sahin 2018). The cool thing about this study is that along with evaluating student achievement, they also tracked the students’ attitudes toward science. They used a scale developed in a previous study to evaluate students’ satisfaction, or whether students think AR was easy and useful; anxiety, or any doubts students may have about the technology; and willingness, or students’ desire to use the technology moving forward (Sahin 2018).
What did they find? A significant difference in both achievement and attitudes between the experimental and control groups. AR significantly increased student achievement in science, and students loved it. Because AR can offer seemingly magical educational experiences, it can bring even the most disinterested student into science (Sahin 2018).
Equity in education
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Best practices in education also involve understanding the gaps that exist in regards to who succeeds in school. In the United States, students from low-income families are more likely to perform poorly in science and that gap only increases as they progress through school (Bustamante 2018). (Editor's Note: These types of statistics are important for understanding systemic discrimination in education, but they can feel defeating. For some happy stories, here are some conversations with people who actively work to lessen this discrimination every day.) This study focused on Head Start’s “domain-general skills,” or skills that help children succeed in school no matter what subject they are learning. In particular, one of these domain-general skill categories is called “approaches to learning,” which involves persistence, motivation, flexible thinking, and other related skills. The study cites recent research that showed children with higher approaches to learning improved more in science during the year.
What does all that mean? According to the study, science experiences in preschool provide students with opportunities to test out their approaches to learning, and in turn, strong approaches to learning allow children to enjoy and navigate their experiences with science (Bustamante 2018). This mirrors earlier research that found higher motivation and interest in science improved student outcomes, as well. In the big picture, understanding the connection between the general skills of persistence and motivation and the development of “science readiness” skills is really critical – and designing curriculum to explore all these facets is going to be really important.
Beyond direct education skills, researchers at the University of Idaho and the University of Arizona found that family engagement in their children’s science education benefited Hispanic families and students in particular (Davis 2017). In the study, the researchers highlight the negative effect of poverty on all education outcomes, but particularly science, and discuss the factors that keep Hispanic families in Idaho in poverty.
They found a few interesting reasons why Hispanic student achievement in science education was lower than other ethnicities. For one, Hispanic parents had completed less years and levels of education, and also reported income below the poverty line much more than White parents. When surveyed, Hispanic parents had high hopes for their children’s future education prospects, but also expressed an inability to help them with things like higher-level homework or college applications and cost.
To combat this, the researchers suggest that involving Hispanic parents in youth science education before their students reach high school could bridge the gap and make those parents feel more comfortable helping their children with schoolwork. But, they did say that more research needs to be done to understand how best to integrate parents into the school system without placing extra burdens on parents who already face financial and time challenges.
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What teachers know
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So far, all of these studies have focused on the integration of new methods, psychologies, and strategies into how teachers are conducting their science education. But what about the teachers? Something Urevig discusses in his Ensia Magazine article about science education is that teachers are often just as uninformed about up-to-date climate science research, for example, and lack the institutional resources to develop their own curriculum.
So, what do teachers know about climate change? One study, conducted by a researcher at the University of Kuwait, tried to answer that (Jafer 2019). He developed a survey that he gave to first- and fourth-year students in the College of Education at the University of Kuwait, specifically to see what they knew about the greenhouse effect. (They are called “pre-service teachers” in Kuwait and were specifically studying to be science teachers). I found this to be a particularly interesting choice of topic, because misconceptions about the greenhouse effect are much more prominent in the United States than a lot of people think – and, as it turns out, in Kuwait as well.
The researcher found that although there was no statistical difference between the younger and older students in most questions, many of them did believe incorrect statements about the greenhouse effect (Jafer 2019). Those statements included the idea that the greenhouse effect is made worse by increased ozone near the ground, and that the greenhouse effect is worsened by the hole in the ozone, both of which are false. Overall, the researcher found that many of these pre-service teachers had conflated various environmental issues and their solutions, believing that any positive environmental action could prevent a negative environmental issue even if the action and issue were scientifically unrelated.
To explain this, the researcher hypothesized that the students’ lack of real-world application for what they had learned in college was the issue. He suggested further research with teachers currently working in the field to explore whether this issue continues after the students become working teachers.
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Researchers from MuÅŸ, Turkey, did evaluate teachers in action, but not on their science knowledge. They specifically focused on how early childhood teachers created science education activities, handled challenges, and developed solutions (Karademir 2019). Researchers spent time in the classroom observing how teachers created activities, what materials they used, and how they navigated teaching a complex topic.
One of the interesting problems the researchers saw in survey results was that the preschool teachers were unsatisfied with the materials available in the science center area of their classrooms. They had numerous suggestions for materials they would like to add, and some cited a lack of financial or parental support to acquire those items (Karademir 2019). When researchers directly observed the teachers in the classroom, many of the materials that were in the science areas went unused.
It was the same when the teachers discussed the methods they used for teaching science to their students: Teachers highlighted numerous potential methods and learning strategies they believed were important, but upon observation in the classroom, researchers found that many of these methods were not put into practice. Although the study does not give specific reasons why this might be the case, lack of institutional support or assistance with curriculum development could play a big role.
Takeaways
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Students who are interested in science will have higher motivation and be more interested in more learning about science
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Low-income and students from marginalized communities require extra support and outreach, particularly to their families, to improve their science education outcomes
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Teachers often maintain the same misconceptions present in the larger public about scientific topics, and need to be carefully taught to avoid passing on the misinformation
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Lack of materials and institutional support or development harms teacher success in the classroom
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New technologies can provide a sense of wonder and excitement to otherwise disinterested students, particularly augmented or virtual reality technology, and also improves student success
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More research is needed on individual curricula’s efficacy to identify the best standards
Climate and environment: Strategies for broad-based action
"Most everybody else seemed content to sit around. Some of the attendees confused uncertainty around the margins of the issue (whether warming would be three or four degrees Celsius in 50 or 75 years) for uncertainty about the severity of the problem. As Gordon MacDonald liked to say, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would rise; the only question was when. The lag between the emission of a gas and the warming it produced could be several decades. It was like adding an extra blanket on a mild night: It took a few minutes before you started to sweat."
Gordon MacDonald, pictured in the photo, was one of the first scientists to study the effects of rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and advocate for congressional action. He was particularly fond of metaphors, including the one he used in the quote above. Despite much effort, the world has not made it far enough, and the study of how to communicate climate and environmental science to the masses is more important than ever.
Climate on the campaign trail
How much people know and care about climate change is always on display in the voting booths. For some political candidates, particularly Democrats, a strong climate action platform is almost required right now — just look at the 2020 presidential election season in the United States, where one candidate, Jay Inslee of Washington State, literally ran on a climate-only platform, not even seeking to win but simply wanting to bring climate action into the larger messaging. It clearly worked, because many candidates who stayed in the race adapted parts of Inslee’s policies for their own platforms. Of course, that perspective is fairly U.S.-centric, so to get an idea of what other countries are doing and saying in their politics around climate action, we’ll have to turn to the primary literature.
A study conducted in 2019 by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Heifei, China looked at this very issue (Anwar 2019). They define climate action not as a scientific issue, but as a socio-scientific one, saying that public action is ultimately driven not by the public’s understanding of the facts, but how much risk could be caused by doing nothing. This framing is exactly why researchers are continuing to study effective climate communication that could change behavioral patterns and push people to action.
The researchers chose Pakistan as a case study because Pakistanis are more likely to feel the negative effects of climate change sooner than the rest of the world. Temperature rise will make certain areas unlivable and unsuitable for agriculture, and will also bring about increased extreme weather events. In a survey of seven Asian countries, Pakistan was the only one where people reported that their life has already worsened, and they also reported the lowest confidence in their government to act on climate change (Anwar 2019).
The researchers evaluated Pakistani political parties’ strategies around climate change and found they tended to be “accommodative,” meaning there has been inclusion of climate change into their platforms (Anwar 2019). But, the parties’ primary priorities were with health, corruption, and economic growth. Because climate was not a topic that particularly resonated on the campaign trail, the study recommended that citizens take an active role in climate communication to increase inter-community conversations around the future (Anwar 2019).
The impact of local community education
This isn’t the only study that has highlighted the power of community in pushing people to act on climate. Researchers at the University of Missouri explored state park interpretation and education as a way for families to engage in low effort but high engagement forms of environmental education (Balasubramanyam 2019). Interpretation is an informal teaching style used in recreational settings, such as a state park or a nature center, to inform visitors about key scientific topics. Generally, these topics are locally relevant, such as learning about how waterfalls form at Niagara Falls.
However, the researchers specifically noted that Midwestern communities, where the University of Missouri is located, lack obvious visual evidence of the effects of climate change, such as sea level rise or glacier melt. The main result of the study was that interpreters were interested in discussing climate change with visitors, but were also hesitant (Balasubramanyam 2019). They need training in climate science in order to teach about it, much like science teachers in the classroom that was discussed in an earlier section.
Most interesting was the study’s suggestion that local researchers participate in place-based studies to develop more localized examples and understandings of the way climate change could affect the nearby ecosystems. Sharing information with visitors about key climate change concepts serves them beyond just their one visit, and allows them to better understand the place they live (Balasubramanyam 2019).
But there can be challenges, particularly when environmental action is paired with systemic issues of race and class. A researcher at the University of Vermont found that coalitions between institutional, mainstream environmental groups and local environmental justice groups are really difficult because the two are coming in with two different sets of values and lived experiences (Macias 2008). In the study, he looks at a conflict between white environmentalists and rural Hispanic communities in northern New Mexico over logging and wood use. Because the urban, mostly white environmental groups lacked the cultural understanding of why firewood was important to these rural communities, the two had no common ground.
Not surprisingly, the solution is all about who has the institutional power. The researcher writes that cultural activism on the part of the rural community was a last resort because they weren’t included in the decision-making to begin with (Macias 2008). Bringing historically disenfranchised groups into environmental policy decisions is how you build common ground.
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A study conducted looking at Swedish forest owners and their responses to climate change had a similar result. This time, what gave the forest owners institutional power was their access to information and what they could do as a result (Vulturius 2019). The study evaluated two groups of natural resource managers in Sweden, first looking at ones who had participated in climate communication projects through the government, and then those who had not. The study found a statistically significant difference between the two groups: The group that had received information about climate was more concerned about it, felt more urgently that action was necessary, and intended to adapt themselves (Vulturius 2019).
Creative ventures into climate communication
There’s other ways to connect with people that might be a little more fun — creative pursuits like art, music, design, and film. Researchers from Tulane University reviewed 200 different climate communication art projects across the United States (Lesen 2016). Interestingly, they found that 20 percent of the projects were initiated independently, either by a solo artist or a collaborative team of artists and scientists, while the rest were created by institutions. The study found that increasing collaboration and communication between the arts and sciences made for highly successful installations and art projects (Lesen 2016).
One study from the University of Massachusetts found that landscape installations, or public art exhibits featuring natural elements, can be a powerful tool in communicating important scientific topics (Aragón 2019). It highlights the idea of “landscape messaging,” which is when artists and architects use the landscape to demonstrate real signs of climate change and provide visual cues. They particularly focused on a landscape installation in Boston, Massachusetts called High Tide and how it taught local residents about future flooding due to sea level rise.
In another study, researchers created an educational video game about climate change, focusing on potential challenges and solutions (Dulic 2016). As has been highlighted in earlier sections, providing people with local examples of complex scientific topics raises their engagement significantly, which is why the game designers specifically incorporated community perspectives into the script.
Although art can be an impactful way of educating the public about science, whether or not it spurs action is still up for debate. One study found that although people felt more motivated and aware of climate change after watching movies or documentaries about climate change, behavior change was relatively short-term (Sakellari 2014). Instead of focusing on purely scientific documentaries and educational programs, the researchers suggest a different way of doing things.
They cite a successful campaign by the Harvard Alcohol Project, which partnered with Hollywood studios and television networks to popularize the term “designated driver” and reduce drunk driving incidents. If environmental organizations could do something similar and get narrative, emotional storylines about climate change into mainstream television, it could tip the scale (Sakellari 2014).
Takeaways
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Citizens taking an active role in science communication and advocacy can reduce the stigma or inaction around an issue
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Art and design have both shown to be powerful education tools for science, particularly when they have a local focus
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Interpretation-style education can be extremely successful, such as at state parks, when paired with interpreter training on climate change and local cultural competencies
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Climate science education works when you give people the information they need to make good decisions about their own lives
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Incorporating awareness of systemic privilege and discrimination dynamics between separate groups involved in an issue can provide common ground
Science policy: Why science-driven law makes a difference
“The political battle over the science of climate change makes it clear how vast the chasm is separating how science understands the world from how politics acts in the world. As Micheal Mann has written from personal experience and Andrew Revkin has covered for years, climate science and politics have made for an ugly stew.
What makes this gulf all the more frightening is that the climate issue is only one of the existential questions we face. Genetics, robotics, big data, artificial intelligence, brain-machine interfaces, energy modalities — each one has the capacity to drive radical shifts in our culture. All of these may — in fact — pose fundamental dangers to human culture. Or they may lift us all up. It depends on the choices we make.”
The choices that astrophysicist and science writer Adam Frank is talking about in the above piece have everything to do with politics, and hopefully, science too. Bringing the two together has been fairly ugly in the United States, and has often resulted in inaction. We can do better, first by understanding how the science-policy gap came about in the first place.
The gap between science and policy
To get to the bottom of that very question, researchers in Sweden evaluated the reason for the delay in environmental governance, as in the reason governments fail to act on important environmental and scientific issues (Karlsson 2019). While there have been successful examples of governing bodies taking environmental action, there are far more examples of governing bodies failing at it. In the paper, they propose a new framework to use in understanding these delays in action, and hopefully to spur faster action. The framework explores the different areas within decision-making where delay could occur, such as during the scientific process and the gaining of new knowledge. It could also happen in the implementation stage, when the policy has been created but keeps not actually happening (Karlsson 2019).
Overall, the big takeaway from the paper is that more research is needed: By incorporating the idea of delay mechanisms into larger conversations about action and inaction, scientists can draw attention to the pattern and begin breaking it down (Karlsson 2019).
But once policy does go into effect, it needs to be rigorously evaluated, too. Researchers in Finland evaluated their own government’s forestry legislation in the boreal habitat spanning most of the country (Wistbacka 2018). Specifically, the legislation was designed to protect the Siberian flying squirrel, a protected species both in Finland and by the European Union. To explore whether the Finnish laws tasked with saving the squirrel’s habitat were actually effective, the researchers collected data in the environment and found, unsurprisingly, that the current legislation was ineffective. A revised form of the legislation was also deemed unsatisfactory, as both maintained only small breeding areas for squirrels and caused further reduces in their population (Wistbacka 2018).
The reason these policies were so ineffective, the paper says, is because they aren’t science-driven. The guidelines set within the regulations aren’t strict enough or backed by enough data to make them actually helpful in saving the squirrel. And the reason, the paper says, that the policy was written that way? The forestry industry has a tight hold over the government for economic and political reasons, and the further exploitation of the land was favored over saving a species (Wistbacka 2018).
As a solution, the researchers propose open discussion between scientists, policy makers, and the forestry industry — not just pushing for changed legislation, but acknowledging the benefits and trade-offs to all involved and reaching common ground (Wistbacka 2018).
In a forest on the other side of the world, researchers explored a methodology in Nepal called the “Policy Lab” (Ojha 2019). The method is designed to provide new ways scientists and research groups can reach out to legislators and policy makers with their findings, and present them in ways that will encourage action. Just like what researchers said was important in Finland, bringing different stakeholders together to discuss the trade-offs and benefits to all sides is critical to this methodology (Ojha 2019).
The Policy Lab framework is also designed to be “diagnostic and deliberative,” allowing stakeholders to redefine and evaluate problems by viewing the evidence. It also encourages people to learn together. When it was applied in Nepal over a five-year period, the researchers saw clear successes: Small discussion forums generated new ideas, Nepali researchers learned how to craft their findings in a policy-friendly way, and the two-way dialogue settings created connections across the metaphoric aisle (Ojha 2019).
Although the framework was applied in a very specific geographic location about a very specific topic, the researchers provide many real-world examples that could be applied anywhere, even in smaller regional settings like universities, local zoos and aquariums, and environmental activism groups. Understanding the science behind collaboration, as these researchers did, is going to be critical to policy implementation — especially on a global scale.
Implementing globally-effective policies
Climate change, pollution, disease, and ecosystems don’t pay attention to country borders, and the effect of science can be felt far beyond one country’s reach. But implementing global policies that tackle important issues seems impossible, given individual countries’ inability to create policies within their own borders.
A researcher in Turkey, using his country as an example, posed the argument that aligning in larger and larger networks — beginning at the local town or municipality level and moving into transnational collaborations — will be critical to fighting climate change (Uzunboy 2019). But how do you do it?
In his case study, local governments felt more and more disappointed and frustrated by the inaction at the national level, so they took it upon themselves to be leaders. Urban areas that take climate action into their own hands like this can be seen as urban experiments, where the policies and action they take can inform other urban areas on best practices (Uzunboy 2019).
In a completely different geographic arena, one study focused several European Union programs designed to bring science and society together, particularly to raise public awareness of technological advancements (Conceição 2019). Interestingly, the researchers note, the names of these programs have slightly changed during their evolution: First, “Raising Public Awareness.” Then, it was changed to “Science and Society,” then “Science in Society,” and now “Science with / for society.”
The reason for the change? According to the researchers, the European Union seems to be pivoting its focus away from citizens as “unknowledgeable audiences,” instead seeing them as “agents” who can actually be involved and take action on these issues if they choose to (Conceição 2019). Like other findings discussed in this section, it seems that it’s key to incorporate as many stakeholders as possible in order to be the most effective. Incorporating stakeholders on a local level can be a model for similar incorporation on a global scale.
Another study looked at air pollution in China, where it’s a major public health issue, noting that although much research has been done in Europe and North America around science policy, very little has been published about Asian countries (Wan 2020). What they found is that specifically around the air pollution issue, policy and science seem to co-evolve, informing each other rather than one dominating the other. The study calls this the “co-evolutionary model,” and it is very effective.
The study also found another contrast between how North American and European countries do business in this area and how China does — many of the senior administrators in China’s government, such as the director of the Air Division of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, are extremely well-educated on specific technical topics. That director, for example, completed a postdoc at Harvard University in environmental management. But in the United Kingdom, the researchers explain, the people who hold similar positions in government tend to be “generalists,” scientific experts in broader ways (Wan 2020).
Although other political relations make collaborating with China difficult for countries like the United States, understanding how policymakers in China have developed policies curtailing air pollution could be extremely beneficial. Sometimes, global collaboration isn’t necessarily about signing a treaty or another Paris Agreement — it’s also about learning from each other to be successful within our borders.
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Takeaways
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Studies highlighting case studies in other countries for science-policy collaboration can be used as models elsewhere
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A “co-evolutionary model” of science and policy, where both evolve together and inform each other, has shown to be successful in bridging the gap between them
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Transnational collaborations are possible if you start at the local level and allow decentralized towns or municipalities take their own action
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There’s a pivot away from viewing citizens as ignorant, and instead viewing them as actors and agents who can influence science and policy in their own way
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Policies should be rigorously evaluated after they are enacted just as much as before, to make sure they are still effective
Public health: Communicating medical outcomes and health opportunities
“In Alabama, a school removed the doors from bathroom stalls to stop students from sneaking inside to vape. In Colorado, a school decided to forfeit a volleyball game after finding “widespread vaping” and other infractions by the team. And in Pennsylvania, at a school where administrators have tried installing sensors to detect vaping in bathrooms and locker rooms, students caught with vape devices face a $50 fine and a three-day suspension.
At least 530 people have been sickened by mysterious lung illnesses related to using e-cigarettes with nicotine or vaping THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and at least eight have died. That has sent high schools, the epicenters of youth vaping, racing to give teenagers a new, urgent message: Vaping can be deadly.”
In Crystal Lake, Illinois, where this Times story is centered, teachers were trained how to figure out if a student is concealing a vape and what to say when they catch them. Students were given drug education seminars and information about the dangers of vaping and smoking. And yet, teenage vaping has still been increasing steadily everywhere. Communicating health information, like the risks associated with vaping, has always been urgent — but are we doing it right, and how can we do it even better?
Communicating health risks to the public
It’s always been the same debate: How do we educate teenagers and young adults about the dangers of cigarettes and vaping? Do drug education programs like D.A.R.E. really work? A study in the Journal of Cancer Education evaluated how teenagers preferred to receive online tobacco education, looking both at functionality and aesthetics (Lazard 2019). It’s been well-documented that cigarette use is decreasing, but non-cigarette tobacco products like vapes have been increasing. The researchers conducted focus groups and interviews to understand what teens wanted from their tobacco education in an effort to curb that increase.
What they found is that teens had very specific font and color preferences, in addition to content-related comments such as preferring interactive features or mobile-friendly website design (Lazard 2019). They preferred clean layouts free of clutter, with clear navigation cues to understand what they were doing. They liked infographics and disliked “scary images” designed to frighten them into quitting. There’s more in the study — but overall, teens knew what they wanted from a health education platform, and the people creating those platforms would do well to listen.
There’s also health communication with the intersection of climate change and public health. A study in Environmental Management looked at how wildlife managers can communicate the health risks caused by wildfire smoke, especially because wildfires can be unpredictable and fast-acting (Olsen 2014). The study evaluates what strategies were typically used to inform people about smoke, such as hotlines, public meetings, and radio announcements.
When they interviewed the people often tasked with communicating these risks, many of them were uncertain if the strategies they used were working, and if they weren’t, how to do better. Interestingly, the researchers noted that the majority of people they spoke with were actively searching to improve their communication strategies, but often didn’t know what to do next or even how to evaluate what was working.
Through interviews, the researchers found that overall, communication and partnerships between local organizations was the way to have the biggest impact. Wildfires don’t always happen within one state’s borders, especially on the West Coast where fires in California often bring smoke to Oregon and Washington. Forming inter-agency partnerships before fires occur to rely on during the fire can be key to communicating health impacts across state lines.
Health literacy — who has it and why
Those online tobacco programs from the beginning of this section were looking to teach health literacy, which is the level at which individuals can obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services they need, and use that information to make health decisions. It’s a two way street — many health education programs are designed to increase health literacy, but also need to be created for their audience’s existing level so participants can understand the new material and gradually increase their decision-making skills.
Understanding how people develop health literacy and what they use it for can be a key part of understanding how to communicate important health information. Researchers explored the power of knowledge in the realm of HPV — and found that cancer survivors who knew their disease was caused by HPV were significantly more likely to vaccinate their children (Shelal 2019).
Additionally, those cancer survivors were more likely to become public advocates for research and vaccination, and the researchers found that those testimonies were deeply effective in pushing others to take action. The researchers’ recommendation was that cancer advocacy organizations educate and empower these cancer survivors with HPV vaccine information and use them to conduct a coordinated campaign (Shelal 2019).
But it also matters who gets the information, and how. Researchers in New South Wales, Australia looked at how women knew about cervical cancer screenings and if they utilized them, finding that poor women knew about and accessed those services significantly less than wealthier women (Mahumud 2020). Specifically, they looked at resource-constrained countries like India and Tanzania, where cervical cancer is a major cause of death despite the availability of screenings designed to catch it early.
To fix this problem, the researchers suggest prioritizing national initiatives targeting underprivileged women through specific means, like sending aid workers to areas where very few women were utilizing the cervical cancer screening services. Besides wealth, though, the researchers found that exposure to mass media and level of schooling were two other factors deeply impacting the use of screening services (Mahumud 2020). This solidifies the idea that health outcomes are intertwined with socioeconomic status, something that has been heavily researched in this field already.
We know there are many vulnerable populations who would benefit from increased outreach about health and wellness. Another one of these groups are homeless and vulnerably housed people, many of whom also have mental health conditions. A study in the Community Mental Health Journal found that although homeless Canadians often heavily used their health care services, there wasn’t much literature on their health literacy overall (Farrell 2019).
The researchers evaluated each person’s health literacy and then also asked them to self-report what they thought their literacy was. They found that there was a significant difference between those two figures, but it’s not what you’d expect — the study participants actually underestimated themselves, saying they had lower health literacy than the researchers actually found when they tested them. Two potential reasons for this: Maybe there were word comprehension issues due to the nature of the people being interviewed. Maybe, because these individuals use the health care system more as homeless and mentally ill individuals, their familiarity with medical words increased their actual literacy without them realizing.
Overall, the researchers presented numerous techniques for treating mentally ill and/or homeless patients, both tangible and intangible. They encouraged medical providers to be respectful and willing to meet the patient at their level, rather than assuming a certain amount of health literacy. They also encouraged building health literacy into intake procedures to understand where patients are the second they come in the door. And, they firmly said that more research needs to be focused on these patients in order to serve them correctly.
Positive outcomes through social and family connectedness
In a different realm of harmful marketing campaigns, one study looked at unrealistic food marketing, where low-nutrition, high fat and sugar food is often promoted rather than healthier alternatives — think, fast food commercials (Austin 2020). To help parents resist those negative messages and teach their children about better nutrition, they proposed training the parents with “media management skills.” These included things like speaking to their children about food labels, understanding the ratio of healthy and unhealthy food at home, having conversations about how much fruit and vegetables were being eaten, and more.
Even though improving the social messages children and teenagers receive about food is just as important, the researchers said there are things parents can do in the home to teach their children about food and counteract the negative messages they’re taking in. Additionally, the study highlighted how the findings can help teachers and health educators in schools connect with parents and work together to improve nutrition outcomes for children (Austin 2020).
Another population dynamic that may benefit from specific health interventions are older adults, one study found (Kafeety 2020). Specifically, the researchers looked at socially isolated older adults during extreme heat events, and the services they may need in order to survive. What they found was that the key to building resilience was social connection — identifying potentially at-risk individuals beforehand and connecting them to services and to each other can have a profound impact on their survival (Kafeety 2020).
Obviously, it’s a challenging task to try and identify all at-risk individuals who may need extra phone calls, check-ups, or other services in order to build community resilience. The researchers noted one example from Rome, where in-home caretakers placed hanging signs on the doors of certain clients, with their consent, identifying them as vulnerable. That way, the community members around them have a way of knowing who might need their help should an extreme heat event begin. And, acknowledging the already steep burdens on health care workers, the researchers said more strategizing would be needed to find a way to help these adults while also not placing additional work on the workers tasked with their safety.
Takeaways
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Social connectedness is a powerful tool for increasing positive health outcomes for vulnerable, isolated people
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Understanding what people, and especially teenagers, want from their health education curricula is important in creating effective programs
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People with more wealth, schooling, and access to mass media are more likely to utilize preventive care like cervical cancer screenings, suggesting more outreach and communication is necessary for poorer populations
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Partnerships between organizations can lead to better outcomes for everyone
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Health literacy research is necessary in understanding how different populations make decisions about their health care, and this research should take into account systemic privilege and power
Works cited