Shereefdeen Hisba, Grant Lauren Elizabeth, Patel Vayshali, MacKay Melissa, Papadopoulos Andrew, Cheng Leslie, Phypers Melissa, McWhirter Jennifer Elizabeth
Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Population Medicine Building, Room 201, 50 Stone Rd E, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1, Canada, 1 519-824-4120.
Outbreak Management Division, Centre for Foodborne, Environmental & Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Public Health Agency of Canada, Guelph, ON, Canada.
JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2025 Apr 10;11:e68724. doi: 10.2196/68724.
Effective dissemination of federal risk communication by news media during multijurisdictional enteric illness outbreaks can increase message reach to rapidly contain outbreaks, limit adverse outcomes, and promote informed decision-making by the public. However, dissemination of risk communication from the federal government by mass media has not been evaluated.
This study aimed to describe and assess the dissemination of federal risk communication by news media outlets during multijurisdictional enteric illness outbreaks in Canada.
A comprehensive systematic search of 2 databases, Canadian Newsstream and Canadian Business & Current Affairs, was run using search terms related to the source of enteric illnesses, general outbreak characteristics, and relevant enteric pathogen names to retrieve news media articles issued between 2014 and 2023, corresponding to 46 public health notices (PHNs) communicating information about multijurisdictional enteric illness outbreaks during the same period. A codebook comprised of 3 sections-general characteristics of the article, consistency and accuracy of information presented between PHNs and news media articles, and presence of health belief model constructs-was developed and applied to the dataset. Data were tabulated and visualized using RStudio (Posit).
News media communicated about almost all PHNs (44/46, 96%). News media commonly developed their own articles (320/528, 60.6%) to notify the public about an outbreak and its associated product recall (121/320, 37.8%), but rarely communicated about the conclusion of an outbreak (12/320, 3.8%). News media communicated most outbreak characteristics, such as the number of cases (237/319, 74.3%), but the number of deaths was communicated less than half the time (114/260, 43.8%). Benefit and barrier constructs of the health belief model were infrequently present (50/243, 20.6% and 15/243, 6.2%, respectively).
Canadian news media disseminated information about most multijurisdictional enteric illness outbreaks. However, differences in coverage of multijurisdictional enteric illness outbreaks by news media were evident. Federal organizations can improve future risk communication of multijurisdictional enteric illness outbreaks by news media by maintaining and strengthening interorganizational connections and ensuring the information quality of PHNs as a key information source for news media.
在多辖区肠道疾病暴发期间，新闻媒体有效传播联邦风险信息可扩大信息传播范围，迅速控制疫情，减少不良后果，并促进公众做出明智决策。然而，大众媒体对联邦政府风险信息传播情况尚未得到评估。
本研究旨在描述和评估加拿大多辖区肠道疾病暴发期间新闻媒体对联邦风险信息的传播情况。
对两个数据库（加拿大新闻流数据库和加拿大商业与时事数据库）进行全面系统检索，使用与肠道疾病来源、一般疫情特征及相关肠道病原体名称有关的检索词，以获取2014年至2023年期间发布的新闻媒体文章，这些文章对应于同期发布的46份关于多辖区肠道疾病暴发信息的公共卫生通知（PHN）。制定了一个由三个部分组成的编码手册——文章的一般特征、PHN与新闻媒体文章之间信息呈现的一致性和准确性，以及健康信念模型结构的存在情况，并将其应用于数据集。使用RStudio（Posit）对数据进行制表和可视化处理。
新闻媒体报道了几乎所有的公共卫生通知（44/46，96%）。新闻媒体通常自行撰写文章（320/528，60.6%），向公众通报疫情及其相关产品召回情况（121/320，37.8%），但很少报道疫情结束情况（12/320，3.8%）。新闻媒体报道了大多数疫情特征，如病例数（237/319，74.3%），但死亡人数的报道不到一半（114/260，43.8%）。健康信念模型的益处和障碍结构很少出现（分别为50/243，20.6%和15/243，6.2%）。
加拿大新闻媒体传播了大多数多辖区肠道疾病暴发的信息。然而，新闻媒体对多辖区肠道疾病暴发的报道存在明显差异。联邦机构可通过维持和加强组织间联系，并确保作为新闻媒体关键信息来源的公共卫生通知的信息质量，来改善未来新闻媒体对多辖区肠道疾病暴发的风险信息传播。
