Ruiz Sienna, Okere Uzoma Charles, Eggers Michelle, O'Leary Catina, Politi Mary, Wan Fei, Housten Ashley J
Division of Public Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States.
Health Literacy Media, St. Louis, MO, United States.
JMIR Hum Factors. 2023 Apr 27;10:e39697. doi: 10.2196/39697.
Effective public health messaging has been necessary throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but stakeholders have struggled to communicate critical information to the public, especially in different types of locations such as urban and rural areas.
This study aimed to identify opportunities to improve COVID-19 messages for community distribution in rural and urban settings and to summarize the findings to inform future messaging.
We purposively sampled by region (urban or rural) and participant type (general public or health care professional) to survey participants about their opinions on 4 COVID-19 health messages. We designed open-ended survey questions and analyzed the data using pragmatic health equity implementation science approaches. Following the qualitative analysis of the survey responses, we designed refined COVID-19 messages incorporating participant feedback and redistributed them via a short survey.
In total, 67 participants consented and enrolled: 31 (46%) community participants from the rural Southeast Missouri Bootheel, 27 (40%) community participants from urban St Louis, and 9 (13%) health care professionals from St Louis. Overall, we found no qualitative differences between the responses of our urban and rural samples to the open-ended questions. Participants across groups wanted familiar COVID-19 protocols, personal choice in COVID-19 preventive behaviors, and clear source information. Health care professionals contextualized their suggestions within the specific needs of their patients. All groups suggested practices consistent with health-literate communications. We reached 83% (54/65) of the participants for message redistribution, and most had overwhelmingly positive responses to the refined messages.
We suggest convenient methods for community involvement in the creation of health messages by using a brief web-based survey. We identified areas of improvement for future health messaging, such as reaffirming the preventive practices advertised early in a crisis, framing messages such that they allow for personal choice of preventive behavior, highlighting well-known source information, using plain language, and crafting messages that are applicable to the readers' circumstances.
在整个新冠疫情期间，有效的公共卫生信息传递至关重要，但利益相关者在向公众传达关键信息时面临困难，尤其是在城市和农村等不同类型的地区。
本研究旨在确定改善新冠疫情信息以便在农村和城市地区进行社区传播的机会，并总结研究结果以为未来的信息传递提供参考。
我们按地区（城市或农村）和参与者类型（普通公众或医疗保健专业人员）进行了有目的抽样，以调查参与者对4条新冠疫情健康信息的看法。我们设计了开放式调查问题，并使用务实的健康公平实施科学方法分析数据。在对调查回复进行定性分析之后，我们设计了纳入参与者反馈的改进后的新冠疫情信息，并通过简短调查重新分发这些信息。
共有67名参与者同意并参与研究：31名（46%）来自密苏里州东南部农村靴跟地区的社区参与者，27名（40%）来自圣路易斯市的社区参与者，以及9名（13%）来自圣路易斯的医疗保健专业人员。总体而言，我们发现城市和农村样本对开放式问题的回答在定性方面没有差异。各群体的参与者都希望了解熟悉的新冠疫情防控措施、在新冠疫情预防行为方面有个人选择，以及明确的信息来源。医疗保健专业人员根据患者的具体需求对他们的建议进行了背景化阐述。所有群体都提出了与具有健康素养的沟通相一致的做法。我们对83%（54/65）的参与者进行了信息重新分发，大多数人对改进后的信息给出了压倒性的积极回应。
我们建议通过简短的网络调查采用方便的方法让社区参与健康信息的创建。我们确定了未来健康信息传递的改进领域，例如重申危机初期宣传的预防措施、构建信息以便允许个人选择预防行为、突出知名的信息来源、使用通俗易懂的语言，以及撰写适用于读者情况的信息。
