Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Health (London). 2010 Jan;14(1):3-21. doi: 10.1177/1363459309341875.
Currently, many health scholars are concerned about health scares. But what do they mean by the term 'health scare' - are health scares an identifiable phenomenon and how do we currently understand their causation and consequences? By collecting and analysing published articles about events considered to be health scares, this article maps the current views of scholars on their characteristics and causes. Results show that health scares are generally understood as events characterized by fears of catastrophic consequences but little actual mortality. However, the social and economic impacts of these events have often been severe. This survey shows that health scares can be usefully sorted into six categories, each with identifiable internal dynamics, suggesting different communications strategies to achieve resolution in each category. Using the social amplification of risk framework, the conditions under which risk signals were amplified were traced in general terms among major stakeholders. Simple causes for health scare events could not be identified, though some triggers did emerge. Importantly, public ignorance of real risk, media scaremongering and political inaction could be dismissed as primary explanations, though they were sometimes factors in scare events. Implications for risk communication and for future research on risk and public health are discussed.
目前，许多健康学者都关注健康恐慌。但是，他们所说的“健康恐慌”是什么意思呢？健康恐慌是否是一种可识别的现象，我们目前又是如何理解其成因和后果的呢？本文通过收集和分析关于被认为是健康恐慌事件的已发表文章，描绘了学者们目前对健康恐慌特征和成因的看法。研究结果表明，健康恐慌通常被理解为事件特征是对灾难性后果的恐惧，但实际死亡率却很低。然而，这些事件的社会和经济影响往往非常严重。这项调查表明，健康恐慌可以被分为六个类别，每个类别都有可识别的内部动态，这表明在每种类别中都有不同的沟通策略来实现解决。利用风险的社会放大框架，从一般意义上追踪了主要利益相关者中风险信号放大的条件。虽然出现了一些触发因素，但无法确定健康恐慌事件的简单原因。重要的是，公众对实际风险的无知、媒体的危言耸听和政治不作为不能被视为主要解释，尽管在某些情况下，这些因素确实是恐慌事件的一部分。文章还讨论了风险沟通和未来风险与公共卫生研究的意义。
