Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 14, 2026
A Novel Method for Involving Women of Color at High Risk for Preterm Birth in Research Priority Setting
Published on: January 12, 2018
A Qualitative Study to Inform the Development of a Practitioner-Focused Checklist to Build Trust, Address
Christina M Potter1, Vanessa Grégoire, Aishwarya Nagar
1Author Affiliations: Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland (Mss Potter, Nagar, Grégoire, Huhn, and Fink, and Mr Zhu and Dr Sell); Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland (Mss Potter, Nagar, Grégoire, Huhn, and Fink, Mr Zhu, and Dr Sell); Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland (Mss Rivera and Sundelson); and Department of Health, Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland (Ms Jamison).
Context:
Trust in public health strongly influences the effectiveness of public health emergency preparedness and response (PHEPR) activities, particularly risk communication. However, trust in public health has declined, in part due to the growing influence of misinformation and disinformation. Resources for practitioners to anticipate and address these issues are limited.
Objective:
To document expert and practitioner perspectives on how to successfully build trust in public health, address misinformation, and engage in risk communication activities during public health emergencies.
Design, Setting, And Participants:
From November 2022 to December 2023, researchers conducted 38 interviews and 8 focus groups with 100 total participants from 21 states and the District of Columbia. Qualitative analysis of content documented experiences and lessons learned regarding trust, misinformation, and risk communication.
Main Outcome Measures:
Analysis yielded the following themes: the importance of bolstering public health communication workforces, funding mechanisms, and other internal capabilities; successful partnerships with or use of secondary messengers; improving message reach through modern engagement tactics, evaluation, and tailoring; combatting uncertainty and distrust with health literacy and government transparency; the challenges of countering misinformation; and unique approaches to engaging populations with low trust in public health.
Results:
Within the identified themes, key informants provided additional detail regarding these experiences and how local public health practitioners had or could initiate improvements or respond to challenges. To translate these findings to practice, researchers created a checklist of 5 prioritized strategies to build trust, anticipate misinformation, and improve risk communication for public health emergencies, including associated recommended tasks that health departments may enact before and throughout public health emergencies as they arise.
Conclusions:
Health departments and partners can use the checklist, recommendations, and successes described to improve future public health practice. However, the challenges reported suggest the need for wider, proactive efforts to prioritize communication resources in PHEPR plans.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
01:18Steps in Outbreak Investigation
01:22Healthcare Associated Infections II: Preventive Measures
The best practices for preventing healthcare-associated infections include hand hygiene, patient risk...
01:08Obedience
01:21Health Literacy
01:26Principles of Disease Surveillance
01:23Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...