Field epidemiological study on news reports that related to public health emergencies / 中华流行病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective All news reports (NR) that were related to public health emergency (PHE) were collected from the Southern Metropolis Daily (SMD) to explore the characteristics of epidemiology in the fields.Methods Based on the theory of communication that including both case and text analysis,qualitative analysis on all the NR regarding PHE published in SMD from the years of 2008 to 2012,was carried out and input to database using the EpiData.Numbers of articles as indicators were compared to show the yearly change of different types of events.Various features of the NR including coverage,source of information,location of the incident,style and size of news,with or without editorials etc.were statistically analyzed by SPSS version 18.0.Results Among all the 998 reports related to PHE,higher proportion was found in the events of Infectious diseases (35.3％)and food safety (34.1％) respectively.Events on vaccines and drugs used for disease prevention and control (8.9％),environmental pollution caused incidents (8.0％) appeared to be less frequent.Events related to occupational disease,poisoning,bioterrorism and biochemical events were rare.Looking at the monthly distribution of reports,we noticed that the peaks occurred in 2008 and in 2009,which were caused by the Melamine-contamination events and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.Between 2010 and 2012,figures of monthly reports were smooth,including some critical events from the interests of the media.Most events took place in Guangdong province (34.3％) and other provinces (50.9％),with some were from Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan regions (9.5％).However,international events (5.2％) were less seen.Extensive coverage accounted for 17.6％ of all of reports,and 11.5％ allotted the editorials or other forms of in-depth reports.Most of the source of reports on infectious diseases and food safety were from the official release,however.The main sources of occupational diseases and poisoning,vaccines and drug incidents,environmental pollution related incidents were reported by active journalists through interview.Reports on hand,foot and mouth disease,influenza,milk safety,AIDS and lead pollution showed continued concern in the past five years by SMD.Conclusion NR on public health emergencies by SM had encompassed all 10 categories-related events formulated by the Ministry of Health.Sustained and in-depth coverage were more commonly seen.Fieldepidemiologists should learn interdisciplinary sciences on the theory and methodology of communication.They also need to interact with media people during the whole processes of public health emergency preparedness and responses.