(Mis)communicating about COVID-19: Insights from Health and Crisis Communication

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges for the United States and the world. In this article, we discuss several communication challenges that have arisen during the pandemic, with insights from the fields of health and crisis communication. We focus in particular on the lack of clarity in the US response in terms of both what behaviors we are trying to change and how we are communicating about behavior change. While the mixed messages and contradictions have hampered the US response thus far, it is our hope that we will do better going forward. This will require state and local health departments, public health organizations, and all of us to increasingly apply our field's best practices to help calm fears, change behavior, and ultimately reduce suffering and save lives.