Symposium on 'The challenge of translating nutrition research into public health nutrition'. Session 5: Nutrition communication. The challenge of effective food risk communication.
A chronology of food scares combined with a rapid, unchecked, rise in lifestyle-related diseases such as obesity highlights the need for a focus on effective food risk communication. However, food risk communication is highly complex. Many factors will affect its success, including the demeanour and conduct of the source, its transparency, interaction with the public, acknowledgement of risks and timely disclosure. How the message is developed is also important in terms of language, style and pretesting with target audiences, as is the choice of appropriate channels for reaching target audiences. Finally, there are many personal factors that may affect risk perception such as previous experience, knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, personality, psychological factors and socio-demographic factors, many of which remain unexplored. While there is evidence that campaigns that communicate health risk have been associated with behaviour change in relation to major public health and safety issues in the past, it is unknown at this stage whether targeting risk information based on risk-perception segmentation can increase the effectiveness of the messages.
McGloin
Aileen
A
National Nutrition Surveillance Centre, UCD School of Public Health and Population Science, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Republic of Ireland. aileen.mcgloin@ucd.ie
Delaney
Liam
L
Hudson
Eibhlin
E
Wall
Pat
P
D001521:Behavior Therapy; D003142:Communication; D003710:Demography; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000453:epidemiology; D004032:Diet; D004777:Environment; D005502:Food; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology; D010465:Perception; D011584:Psychology; D012307:Risk Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors