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This chapter proposes a framework for epidemiologists to communicate information to nonscientists. It addresses several leading strategies used to communicate epidemiologic information to improve the health of the public. Strategies to communicate health information range from the often chaotic media coverage of published research to well-organized, national public education campaigns. The challenge for the practicing epidemiologist is to use these strategies to communicate important health information effectively, to improve the public's health.

This chapter acts as a guide on implementing ACP practices in a local area, utilizing the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Quality Improvement model, based on extensive experience from the USA and is adapted from the Common Sense Guide to Improving Palliative Care, Oxford University Press, 2007. It presents an introduction, definition of ACP and ‘doing’ ACP; the PDSA quality improvement process; the three fundamental questions and necessary steps to improvement; how to accelerate improvement and spread the gains; examples of ACP, changes to try and common barriers to ACP; frequently asked questions; and communication strategies to initiate and target ACP. The discussion notes that ensuring the centrality of the patient's and family's voices in treatment decision-making is one of the most important goals for achieving patient and family-centred late life care.

This chapter considers how the insights from book's research and other in-depth work that the author has conducted can serve as a guide for practitioners at three levels in the organization—top leaders, managers, and employees—who are seeking to better navigate shifts as they adopt practices for their organizations' lingua franca and cultural transitions. It details the factors that top leaders need to consider when assessing the appropriateness of a lingua franca and corresponding implementation tactics. Without a broader understanding of how language changes affect their workforce, and what is needed for implementation, many organizations will falter in their lingua franca mandates. The chapter also highlights how managers can practically support and accurately evaluate employees who are operating in a cross-lingua environment. Finally, it provides communication strategies for employees in their everyday interactions globally.

The closing chapter draws several conclusions about the framework developed in this book and its ability to help us classify and compare organizations. The chapter also looks at several practical, scholarly, and ethical implications related to the framework developed here for better considering hidden organizations. The chapter closes with comments about future research directions and the importance of work in this area to address multiple tensions surrounding hidden organizations.

Most stakeholders in the health care system—doctors, patients, and policy makers—have not been taught to apply evidence-based information to the many decisions that must be made daily. Little awareness of this problem exists, yet a better use of evidence could improve outcomes for patients, increase patient satisfaction, and lower costs. This chapter considers how the use of information that emerges from evidence-based medicine could be improved. Health literacy is the first step. After a discussion of the barriers that exist to health literacy, possible remedies are presented. Raising health literacy by targeting individual stakeholder groups is debated as is the option of focusing on change in the overall health system. What is required to achieve a change both at the individual and system levels? Solutions are unlikely to generate systemic changes in center-based treatment variations. However, a change at one level may set off change in another. Finally, increasing awareness beyond the immediate professional community is necessary if systemic changes are to be made. The promotion of health literacy requires careful consideration to reach the various stakeholders throughout the health care system.

This report calls for a change in health care, while acknowledging that health care systems are highly complex systems for which there is no simple solution. The starting premise is that one needs to launch and reinforce positive developments among both clinicians and patients. To this end, a vision is offered to transform medical schools into health professional schools; specific ways of leveling the knowledge playing field between clinicians and patients are described to empower patients to ask more questions and dissuade clinicians from “avoidable ignorance.” The Wennberg three-step action plan is proposed to demonstrate how a patient-centered health care paradigm can work for important process and outcome measures. To foster patients’ engagement within the health care system, an existing model that teaches health literacy to children in primary schools is described and possibilities are proposed to foster the delivery of quality health care information via the media and online communities, with the Internet being the technology that is most likely to complete the change in the dynamic of doctor– patient interaction. The 21st century is viewed as the century during which reform ushers in an adult conversation between patients and doctors.

Researchers should chart a communication strategy to maximize the benefit of their communications to their research and career. They first need to free themselves from the attitude that they should fear communicating to lay audiences because of the inherent imprecision of lay communications. Also, they should overcome the fear of communicating beyond their peers because their peers might judge them harshly. They should have a “do-tell” strategy that they communicate as much as possible about their goals and research advances. Such a strategy ensures that their work will reach audiences that they might not have expected. They should also have a “strategy of synergy,” in which they use such content as news releases to reach multiple audiences beyond the media.

Statistical illiteracy in health—the inability to understand health statistics—is widespread among the general public. Many people find it hard to accept uncertainty in the first place and, even if they do, basic numerical information is difficult to understand. The problem is aggravated when the benefits and harms of treatment options must be evaluated or test outcomes understood. Statistical illiteracy results not only from a lack of education but from the nontransparent framing of information that is sometimes unintentional, but which can also be used deliberately to manipulate people. In health care, nontransparent framing of information seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Patients have difficulties finding reliable information—on the Internet, in invitations to screening, medical pamphlets, or media reports—yet this situation can be corrected. Statistical thinking must be taught to the public, and health care workers and journalists must be trained in transparent framing. Knowing what questions to ask, what information is missing, and how to translate nontransparent statistics into transparent ones would empower an educated citizenry to reject attempts to persuade rather than inform.

This chapter covers the practical steps to creating a communication strategy to enhance your research and your career. Developing a strategy for communicating to lay audiences is important for successfully reaching those audiences. That strategy involves first protecting scientific publication against premature public release of scientific data and conclusions. A strategy also involves giving a comprehensive, coherent view of one’s research, sharing one’s research process, and fitting into the institution’s mission. Finding popular “hooks” for communication, or vivid metaphors familiar to people in their everyday lives, will engage your audience and greatly help communicate your work. A successful strategy also entails coordinating with funding agencies and becoming an expert resource for the media.

This chapter explains how the use of computer-mediated communication has dramatically altered written and spoken language, entertainment and socialization as well as general learning and formal education for students. This chapter explores types of computer-mediated communication and discusses potential consequences of digital communication. The chapter closes with strategies that practitioners can use to include computer-mediated communication within the auditory (re)habilitation context.

This chapter shows why terrorism is a losing political tactic. In theory, terrorism serves as a political communication strategy by amplifying the demands of the perpetrators. In reality, terrorism fails because it’s awful at conveying the political goals of the perpetrators. The author explains why terrorism malfunctions as a communication tool with a newfound cognitive heuristic called the Correspondence of Means and Ends bias. Evidence for this bias is revealed in both an experiment embedded in a survey and detailed case studies. Rebels who engage in terrorism will thus struggle to amplify their political demands, lowering the odds of concessions.

Ability to form symbolic concepts and understand meanings is an important part of human communication. In this chapter we investigate how hand movements and body posture bring forth the meaning in communicative situations. We focus on a young girl with the mosaic variant of Patau syndrome. The main point of interest is the embodiment of semiotic categories in the girl’s communication and the meaning constructed in space through her hand gestures. She extracts intricate information through gestures and body postures and is also able to impart meaning with hand gestures in communication situations. The analysis is based on the theories of semiotic categorization of signs, cooperative communication, and studies on hand gestures. The chapter is one of the first studies on the communicative behaviour of people with Patau syndrome. It contributes to explaining the communicative capability of people with this diagnosis, and shows how our ability to form symbolic concepts and understand meanings is reliant not so much on spoken language as on the human inherent ability to observe and interact with the surrounding world.

Chapter 2 details the slow evolution of digital media in the campaign environment and provides a history of the use of digital media for communications strategy across a variety of political campaigns. It identifies three categories of digital media use for strategic communications: tools to define and catalog populations, vessels to transmit information, and objects conducive to citizen interaction and engagement. Understanding the ways that communication technologies have been and continue to be used for these three purposes provides a foundation from which we can understand the ways that campaigns’ contemporary engagement with new media texts is continuing to evolve.

Effective communication during an outbreak or public health investigation is crucial for fostering adoption of public health recommendations and minimizing or preventing harm. During outbreaks, a comprehensive communication strategy integrating news media, social media, and partner engagement is essential for reaching affected persons and for keeping everyone informed about public health actions and recommendations. The strategies outlined in this chapter are the foundation for rapidly and effectively conveying information and public health recommendations to the persons at risk, the media, and the different entities involved in the response. Regardless of the public health event’s cause, core communication actions and steps will be similar; however, in every outbreak or public health investigation, perceptions and needs will vary among target audiences, partners (i.e., persons or organizations that can play a role in the crisis response), and persons or organizations with a connection or interest in the outbreak (stakeholders).

This chapter focuses on how scientific assessments of environmental risks neglect minorities, and how community participation can help in their inclusion, in the process. The Madison Environmental Justice Organization (MEJO) highlights the differences in environmental risk assessments associated with subsistence fish consumption. The chapter describes how knowledge and communication disparities associated with fish consumption are created and ignored by institutions responsible for addressing them. It also focuses on the challenges that MEJO faces in highlighting these issues in institutional risk assessment processes. The experiences of MEJO reveal that extensive efforts are transforming power-sharing relations among groups involved in and influenced by environmental risk assessments. These interactions are also encouraging scientists to induct specific cultural and local knowledge of different community members into such risk assessments and communication strategies.

This chapter examines the process of “branding” information products and the communication strategies of information sellers such as advertising and promotion. It discusses product positioning and persuasion in knowledge markets and recommends the application of the Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) model in the information business. It also suggests that information sellers should not be afraid to feature competing information products on the same “shelf” as long as the products relate to a highly uncertain context.

Logical arguments support the view that complete, transparent, and objective reporting of research results avoids systematic error, misinformation, and unrealistic expectations. Evidence about publication bias (selective publication of research results on the basis of the obtained results), selective outcome reporting bias (reporting on outcomes research depending on the obtained results), increased demand for information by consumers, and ethical considerations supports these logical arguments. Should there be a requirement to publish or report all results? If so, who or what should require the results to be published? What protocols and standards exist for publication and reporting, and how can they help to address the problem? Is the problem solvable? We conclude by summarizing whether the current suggestions are real solutions.

The idea that people should be able to participate meaningfully in personal medical decisions is so widely accepted that it is hard to believe that things were ever otherwise. The idea that doctors should routinely withhold important information from patients, order treatments without informed consent, or should not consider patient preferences—once routine practice—would be as acceptable now as blood-letting to purge bad humors. The modern shared decision-making model has two basic inputs. First, people need the facts: What are their options and the likely outcomes of these options? Second, they need some clarity about their values: How much do they care about the various outcomes and what do they have to go through to get them? Good decisions require a combination of facts and values. Without the facts, good decision making cannot happen. This chapter reviews how drug information generally gets to the U.S. public and recommends how this can be better accomplished through the use of “drug facts boxes.”

This chapter examines the Roman government's communication strategy for its subjects. It explains that the Roman government devoted enormous resources to communicating with its subjects and suggests that the motivation for provincial iterations of Roman propaganda can be ascribed solely to self-interest. The Romans brought to the governance of their empire a set of theories developed in their own political life, and they somewhat counterintuitively adapted these to the governing of provincial aliens. This chapter also discusses Jürgen Habermas' theory of communicative action.