Strategies for Communicating Public Health Research Findings

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  Despite increasing demands on public health infrastructure, federal and state budgets are being cut, in some cases, deeply. This threatens individual lives as well as overall population health. Ethnic minority groups suffer disproportionately. Given this, what are potential effective strategies for communicating public health research findings, as suggested by the social science literature?

Methods:  Based on a review of research examining public opinion and the influence of media framing on U.S. policy attitudes, six guiding principles were formulated concerning the potential impact of various frames on public opinion of public health topics (i.e. tuberculosis or TB). TB is an excellent illustrative topic as it is an essential component of our public health system, it is a fecund area of research, it intersects with most social determinants of health and the general public is either completely naïve or exposed to only negative media frames. The formulated guiding principles were then used to construct preliminary strategies for communicating public health research findings to policy makers and/or the public.

Results: Six guiding principles were formulated: 1: U.S. Public opinion of TB services will show a high degree of response instability due to a lack of general knowledge and low public attentiveness to the issue. 2: Patients in need of TB care will generally not be personally held responsible for their illness because infection occurs by breathing. 3: Framing TB services as a way to help people recover and return to work will be effective in generating support for service provision. 4: Framing TB services as a way to help assure equal opportunity will be more productive than framing TB services as a program the shifts resources from one segment of the population to another. 5: Educating the public about the effectiveness of TB services’ in positively impacting people’s lives is important to garnering widespread support. 6: Emphasizing that TB services require collective efforts to produce shared benefits, and the cost-effectiveness of such approaches, can help garner widespread support.

Conclusions:  Three concrete strategies for framing public health research emerged from these guiding principles: (1) Elicit a “common good” value (e.g., explain to your audience how the system/service is deemed to be in society’s best interest); (2) Highlight the effectiveness of the service or system being provided; and (3) Emphasize the goal of enabling people to recover and return to work. Empirical testing of these recommendations is encouraged.

Implications for research and/or practice:  As income and wealth inequality in the U.S. continues to rise it is increasingly important to bolster public structures that alleviate or reverse the negative social, economic, and health consequences of inequality. National priorities around population health will depend on strong public support for basic public health structures. This and further research may help to create the necessary support. On the micro level, increased public support may also impact individual acceptance of treatment.