RAPID: An Evolving Risk Communication Challenge: The Risk Salience of Zika Virus Infection in an Environment of Shifting Scientific, Social, and Policy Uncertainty and Discourse

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Threats are all around us: from the mundane, such as auto accidents, to the existential, such as global pandemics or nuclear war. How we perceive and manage these threats is related to a number of factors including how "real" the threat feels (its risk salience), our confidence in the sources of information alerting us to the threat and its potential consequences, our faith in the effectiveness of an intervention and in our ability to employ it, and our reliance upon psychological leanings that propel us to being risk-tolerant or risk-averse. The newly emerging Zika virus is a window into many of these facets, and a critically-important opportunity for those engaged in public health risk communication. This research examines how social, scientific, and policy cues influence the U.S. public's appreciation of the risk of Zika virus over time, as well as the public's receptivity to clinical, environmental, and behavioral interventions. By collecting a series of four cross-sectional population surveys over the course of a year, this research illustrates how risk salience evolves, and the extent to which it may be influenced by specific communication and information channels. Analyses reveal how social, scientific, and policy discourse contribute to public understandings of risk and further our understandings of communication strategies. Understanding how messaging changes with evolving scientific knowledge improves risk communication for future threats. These findings contribute to the literature of risk communication, which is often comprised of retrospective analyses of messages, rather than prospective studies of messaging in times of uncertainty. It also helps develop more refined and effective risk communication strategies when populations are faced with the threat of a novel pathogen. Overall, this research contributes to several disciplinary perspectives, notably those of risk assessment, hazard-related decision making, and public health risk communication. The rising attention to the Zika virus offers an opportunity to examine how risk salience evolves in real-time as the threat approaches. Currently, there are no vaccines or therapies for the Zika viral infection, and there is still limited scientific understanding of the virus itself, the vectors, the disease pathogenesis, or even the epidemiology. The opportunity to measure and chart the U.S. public's perception of this threat - and how it is influenced by social, scientific, and policy cues - is time-bound, as the geographic exposure to the virus expands over time, and the data are ephemeral. This research examines how social, scientific, and policy cues influence the US public's perception of the risk over time, as well as the public's receptivity to clinical, environmental, and behavioral interventions. The specific aims of the research are to: (1) chart the trajectory of risk salience as exposure and certainty of the Zika virus increases; (2) identify and analyze the impact of social, scientific, and policy cues and discourse on risk salience; and (3) describe and analyze group differences in the evolving attitudes related to risk perception, as well as receptivity to policy, programmatic, and clinical interventions. Two data sets are developed to investigate these research aims. The first is a repeated cross-sectional national phone survey with an oversample of women of child-bearing age in the US Southern Tier (selected as a sub-population of particular vulnerability), totaling 1,200 respondents. These data are collected quarterly over a year-long period. In parallel with the primary data, a second data set quantifies the number and type of social, scientific, and policy cues observed in sentinel media sources during the time period immediately preceding the survey work. The research team merges these media data with the primary data and tests for their association with respondents? risk salience. The findings contribute to the overall literature of risk communication, which is often comprised of retrospective analyses of messages, rather than prospective studies of messaging in times of uncertainty. It is possible that messaging will change over time as the number of Zika cases increases in the US, as the number of microcephalic infant births increase, and as dramatic stories are reported with greater frequency in the press. Demonstrating how this messaging changes with evolving scientific knowledge improves risk communication for future threats.