The Center for Disease Control is no stranger to crisis communications. At a workshop on May 17 organized by the PR Council of Lake County, Barbara J.Reynolds, CDC Crisis Communication Specialist, ticked off the list of issues and emergencies that she has dealt with over the past 20 years, among them: pandemic influenza (H1N1), vaccine safety, emerging disease outbreaks (SARS) and bioterrorism.
Barbara J. Reynolds, Center for Disease Control Crisis Communications Specialist, shares information remotely from Atlanta with attendees of the PR Council of Lake County social media workshop on May 17.
The CDC built its crisis communications around six principles from its “Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication” (CERC) training program. The training program draws from lessons learned during public health emergencies, and incorporates best practices from the fields of risk and crisis communication.
The six principles are:
- Be First: If the information is yours to provide by organizational authority, do so as soon as possible. If you can’t, then explain how you are working to get it.
- Be Right: Give facts in increments. Tell people what you know when you know it. Tell them what you don’t know. Tell them if you will know relevant information later.
- Be Credible: Tell the truth. Do not withhold information to avoid embarrassment or the possible “panic” that seldom happens. Uncertainty is worse than not knowing. Rumors are more damaging than hard truths.
- Show Compassion and Empathy: This lets people know that you care, that you recognize the pain they’re going through. It is not sympathy, which implies that you know what the person is going through. Chances are, you haven’t experienced what they have.
- Promote Action: These are recommended actions for people to do; e.g., check on neighbors, hold a memorial service, consider preventative vaccinations. The actions move people from simply sitting, thinking and worrying. It helps them psychologically and it helps the community return to a “new normal,” after any kind of crisis.
- Show Respect: People have different beliefs, whether they be cultural, familial, religious or based on a perspective related to the person’s age. By being respectful in your messaging, you improve the chances that those various audiences will believe in what you are doing. That hopefully will lead to changed behavior and compliance with whatever actions or decisions your want them to support.
Reynolds then showed examples of the CDC’s social media sites, and how they responded to comments from the public. As a governmental organization, the CDC only removes comments from the public that are obviously obscene or that threaten someone, she said.
The results of the CDC’s social media practices and policies indicate that they are on the right track, Reynolds said. People who comment or otherwise access CDC through social media:
- Have higher satisfaction ratings (84 out of 100) than those who do not use CDC social media tools (79 out of 100)
- Are more likely to return and recommend the site to others than those who do not use CDC social media tools
- Rate CDC as more trustworthy than those who do not use CDC’s social media tools
Here is another slide from Reynolds’ presentation that shows the CDC scoring higher than its federal agency peers in the areas of perceived collaboration and trust. The 12-point difference in collaboration correlates to a belief that people who use social media do so because they feel it is important to be a participant in their spheres of influence and daily lives.
