Eliciting Opinions on Health Messaging During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Qualitative Survey Study.
JMIR Hum Factors
; 10: e39697, 2023 Apr 27.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2279002
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Effective public health messaging has been necessary throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but stakeholders have struggled to communicate critical information to the public, especially in different types of locations such as urban and rural areas.OBJECTIVE:
This study aimed to identify opportunities to improve COVID-19 messages for community distribution in rural and urban settings and to summarize the findings to inform future messaging.METHODS:
We purposively sampled by region (urban or rural) and participant type (general public or health care professional) to survey participants about their opinions on 4 COVID-19 health messages. We designed open-ended survey questions and analyzed the data using pragmatic health equity implementation science approaches. Following the qualitative analysis of the survey responses, we designed refined COVID-19 messages incorporating participant feedback and redistributed them via a short survey.RESULTS:
In total, 67 participants consented and enrolled 31 (46%) community participants from the rural Southeast Missouri Bootheel, 27 (40%) community participants from urban St Louis, and 9 (13%) health care professionals from St Louis. Overall, we found no qualitative differences between the responses of our urban and rural samples to the open-ended questions. Participants across groups wanted familiar COVID-19 protocols, personal choice in COVID-19 preventive behaviors, and clear source information. Health care professionals contextualized their suggestions within the specific needs of their patients. All groups suggested practices consistent with health-literate communications. We reached 83% (54/65) of the participants for message redistribution, and most had overwhelmingly positive responses to the refined messages.CONCLUSIONS:
We suggest convenient methods for community involvement in the creation of health messages by using a brief web-based survey. We identified areas of improvement for future health messaging, such as reaffirming the preventive practices advertised early in a crisis, framing messages such that they allow for personal choice of preventive behavior, highlighting well-known source information, using plain language, and crafting messages that are applicable to the readers' circumstances.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Qualitative research
/
Randomized controlled trials
Language:
English
Journal:
JMIR Hum Factors
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
39697
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