Tackling Communication: From Information to Engagement Professor Judith Petts

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Tackling Communication From Information to
EngagementProfessor Judith Petts
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Issues

• Definitions and multiple contexts
• Communicating about the environment and health
  questions about evidence?
• How do people understand risks?
• Environmental health inequalities
• Old and new modes of communication
• Key requirements for enhancing public
  communication and engagement

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Environment and Health

• Environment and healthThe relationship between
  environmental variables and human health.
  Sources, sinks and pathways of potentially
  harmful chemicals and organisms present in the
  natural environment that may have an effect on
  human health (www.nerc.ac.uk)
• So what about indoor environments and built
  environments?

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Communication Contexts - 1

• Accidents e.g. the Buncefield phenomenum
• Major Incidents e.g. chemical terrorism flu
  pandemic
• Emergent risk e.g. vector borne disease
• Background risk location specific e.g. radon
• Background risk generic e.g. air pollution
• Industrial proposals e.g. waste, contamination
  remediation
• Climate change future risks
• Communication is context specific and time
  dependent

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Communication Contexts - 2

• Communicating with the vulnerable elderly,
  young, deprived communities
• Communicating with those directly and immediately
  impacted
• How do these compare with the background flow of
  publicly intelligible information on the
  environment and health?

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Communication in the face of the evidence?

• 10 May 2007(www.nerc.ac.uk)
• Researchers find eating certain plant substances
  can slow down the rate of ageing - and that
  females prefer mates that will be long-lived
• So could carrots be the secret to a long life
  and sex appeal??.

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Communication to change awareness and behaviour?

• Often rather simple understanding of the
  relationship between communication and response
• Issue has to be immediately relevant and
  meaningful to individuals
• Evidence that supports it has to be strong and
  clear
• Communication has to be timely
• Communication has to be relevant to what
  individuals can achieve (as opposed to
  authorities etc)

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Uncertainty and (even worse) indeterminacy

• Health communication (and not least related to
  environmental hazards) is nearly always in the
  face of uncertainty and often scientific
  ignorance
• This raises issues of Who is best to give the
  message? How? How honest about ignorance? How
  precautionary? How should we train experts to
  communicate?

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Risk Signatures

• Common finding of much research is that each
  hazard has a distinct profile of
  response/perception a risk signature (much
  like a personality profile)
• No simple relationship between scientific
  accounts and lay accounts
• No standard form of health risk communication

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Example Signatures

• MMR
• Directly relevant
• Child health protection
• Tangible effects
• Parental responsibility
• (social responsibility to a lesser extent)
• Expert disagreement

• Air Pollution
• Indirectly relevant
• Environment of concern
• Unclear effects
• What can I do?
• Other peoples responsibility

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Acquiring Information Knowledge
Social Networks
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Modes of Information Processing

• Analytical formal, logical, often numerical
• Emotional intuitive, natural, experiential,
  based in narrative
• Both are normally active and interacting the
  dance of reason and affect
• Argument communication requires proper
  recognition of both modes of processing

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The Hidden Hazard?

• 2 dimensions - amplified value threatening
• Nuclear power and GM similar
• Value-threatening those that alter human
  institutions, lifestyles and basic values
• Amplified those that interact with social
  structures and social groups, individuals,
  society and the economy in ways unanticipated by
  technical conceptions
• Opaque to anticipatory assessments

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• Public and the Media
• Media can only amplify or attenuate if resonate
  with existing public mood
• Not dealing with a message system but a symbolic
  system
• Visual communication important
• The public are not passive recipients - they are
  media savvy
• Responses to media refined through everyday
  experience
• Media is important where no direct or personal
  experience
• (Petts et al, 2001)

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Trust Basis

• Public Distrust in Government Industry is based
  in concerns that
• (i) They are insensitive to public concerns
• (ii) They are unwilling to acknowledge problems
• (iii) They are unwilling to share information
• They are negligent in performing duties
• Question who do the public trust in relation to
  communicating on environment and health?

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Industrial and Environmental Bads

• Two types of studies
• Proximity to minority and/or disadvantaged
  populations
• Potential and actual risks to surrounding
  populations
• Rarely have claims of inequitable siting been
  correlated to examination of health effects
  disease clusters - different objectives/different
  disciplines

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Confusing and Inconclusive Results

• 2003 data most deprived wards in England
  experience highest concentrations NO2 PM10
  SO2 benzene. Pollution poverty hotspots
  identified in London, Manchester, Sheffield,
  Nottingham, Liverpool
• 2005 data for case study North West more
  deprived populations are more likely to be living
  nearer to waste sites than the less deprived,
  except in the case of landfill sites where it is
  the least deprived populations who are more
  likely to live nearby

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Evidence limits

• Shows patterns of proximity NOT patterns of harm
• Cannot explain why patterns of unequal
  distribution exist
• Patterns of inequality do not immediately imply a
  condition of inequality or injustice exists
• Not only do local populations change but
  categories of the population are not homogenous
  in terms of their vulnerability

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Air Pollution Health

• For the public air pollution is primarily an
  environmental rather than health problem until a
  point source is identified
• People understand that air pollution is not the
  primary cause of health problems
• People do not seem to relate air pollution in
  terms of potential effects on the sensitive
  (i.e. heart disease, bronchial, etc)
• People are denying effects

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Air Pollution Information

• Very low awareness that it exists APIS
  leaflets etc
• People would not look for it
• When presented with it interesting but is
  this our problem? What can we do about it?
• BUT this does not mean that they would not be
  willing to engage with local issues

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LAQM Information

• Some evidence (e.g. Southwark study) people would
  like to have more information on local conditions
  e.g. roadside monitors
• BUT this is more on basis of right-to-know as
  opposed to they want to take personal action
• People interested in being involved in LAQM
  decisions and process

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Air Pollution Point Source Issues

• Significant evidence that people will seek out
  and engage with all relevant expert literature
• Contestation about how standards are set i.e.
  the carcinogen issue
• Need to relate national standards to the local
  conditions
• Belief that local acceptability of risk needs to
  be defined, negotiated and agreed

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Air Pollution Information Needs

• What are the effects? on people with asthma etc
  and on healthy people?
• What does pollution actually mean?
• What do these pollution bands actually mean?
• What are the long-term effects? What does
  long-term mean?
• How do these regional data relate to my area?
• What are these pollutants?
• Who sets the standards?

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Climate Change and Health

• Decline in air quality in summer episodes
• Distribution of vector borne diseases animal
  and human impacts
• Heat
• Emergent diseases
• How can communication be more than emergency
  advice?
• How to build health implications into climate
  change discussion in the face of uncertainty?

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Old New Modes of Communication

• Information provision leaflets versus ICT
• Hazards versus risks
• Emergency response before or after the event,
  how far in advance?
• Decision-making consultation versus engagement
  and analytic deliberative processes

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Sustainability Assessment

• New form of assessment that understands the
  interrelations between environment, society and
  economy - not an extended form of EIA
• EIA - focuses on type of impact and assesses
  degree to which populations (often not specified)
  maybe affected
• Health impacts - the poor relation!

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Health Impact Assessment

• Health risk assessment - focus on sensitive
  receptors - increase disease over lifetime
• Problems - poor understanding of background
  exposure difficulty of characterising population
  at risk understanding basis of health standards
  underpinning emission criteria
• HIA - complete physical, social and mental
  well-being
• Encouragement to HIA within Sustainability
  Appraisal but experience in UK is limited

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Deliberative Decision-Making

• Aim to enhance exchange of views and provide
  opportunities for open challenging of
  assumptions, science, proposals
• Co-generation of lay and expert knowledge
• Has strong potential in the technocratic tools
  that inform decision-making - but still largely a
  set of lines outside the box

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Whose voice gets heard?

• Representation versus representative interests
  the gatekeeper mechanism
• Language and skills tends to privilege
  expertise unless carefully managed
• Access, time available
• Groups often underrepresented the young, ethnic
  groups, socially disadvantaged
• Some groups have specific deliberative needs
  enhanced by the fact that they are often the same
  groups more difficult to engage through
  traditional consultative methods

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Summary Key Requirements

• Stronger understanding of health risk signatures
• Sound science
• Skills in communicating under uncertainty
• Planning for future risk communication not
  least climate change and health issues
• Testing and evaluation of new modes of
  communication i.e. dont just put the
  information on the web
• Analytic-deliberative processes