YUKI NOGUCHI, NPR; Americans are tuning out as omicron rages. Experts call for health messaging to adapt
"Some say the messaging needs to shift to become shorter and simpler and even nod to a brighter future when the pandemic is over...
The problem with COVID-19 messaging, of course, is that the pandemic is not simple to understand. And public health recommendations are based on an evolving understanding of new science, so messages are necessarily complex and they change frequently.
Normally, whether it's seat belt recommendations or smoking cessation, messages do not change often. Yet even consistent messages take time for the public to absorb.
"The challenge we always have with communications, they always say people need to hear things seven times before it really sticks," says Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association...
But vaccines also offer an opportunity for more effective messaging, Benjamin says. Vaccines have altered the threat that COVID-19 poses to people who are vaccinated, he says, and public health leaders can acknowledge that progress and give people a road map for the future, based on how previous pandemics have ended. He argues that people might be more receptive to listening to messages if they're focused on looking forward.
"There is a reluctance to give people information because we're afraid of being wrong three months from now, but I think we do need to give people a sense of hope and we need to tell people what we anticipate going forward and how this ends," he says."
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