Risk communication isn’t that hard

I don’t know why, but whenever me and my team gets cited once, twice, three times a day by another peer-reviewed publication, I get turned on.
Most of that stuff we wrote 20 years ago, but it still has relevance.
So here’s one that cited us and I wish they hadn’t.

Whoever wrote this abstract needs some communication training.
This report assesses peer‐reviewed and grey literature (WTF is grey literature?) on risk communication concepts and practices, as requested by the European Commission to support the implementation of a ‘General Plan for Risk Communication’, i.e. an integrated framework for EU food safety risk assessors and risk managers at Union and national level, as required by the revised EU General Food Law Regulation.
We conducted a scoping review of social research studies and official reports in relation to risk communication in the following areas: understanding and awareness of risk analysis roles and tasks, reducing misunderstanding of the different meaning of the terms ‘hazard’ and ‘risk’, tackling misinformation and disinformation, enhancing confidence in EU food safety, taking account of risk perceptions, key factors in trade‐offs about risks, audience segmentation and tools, channels and mechanisms for coordinated risk communications. We structured our findings as follows: i) definitions of key concepts, ii) audience analysis and information requirements, iii) risk profiling, models and mechanisms, iv) contributions to communication strategies.
We make several recommendations for consideration by the Commission, both in terms of actions to support the design and implementation of the general plan, and research needs that we consider crucial to further inform appropriate risk communication in the EU. EFSA carried out a targeted consultation of experts and a public consultation open to all interested parties including the general public, in preparing and finalising this report.

Technical assistance in the field of risk communication, April 29 2021
European Food Safety Authority
Laura Maxim, Mario Mazzocchi, Stephan Van den Broucke, Fabiana Zollo, Tobin Robinson, Claire Rogers, Domagoj Vrbos, Giorgia Zamariola, and Anthony Smith
doi: 10.2903/j.efsa.2021.6574
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8083185/

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About Douglas Powell

A former professor of food safety and the publisher of barfblog.com, Powell is passionate about food, has five daughters, and is an OK goaltender in pickup hockey. Download Doug’s CV here. Dr. Douglas Powell editor, barfblog.com retired professor, food safety 3/289 Annerley Rd Annerley, Queensland 4103 dpowell29@gmail.com 61478222221 I am based in Brisbane, Australia, 15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time