Unpacking the Realities and Complexities of Sensemaking: Government Practitioners' Experiences of Emergency Risk Communication

A scoping review of wildfire smoke risk communications: issues, gaps, and recommendations

BACKGROUND

Wildfire smoke exposure has become a growing public health concern, as megafires and fires at the wildland urban interface increase in incidence and severity. Smoke contains many pollutants that negatively impact health and is linked to a number of health complications and chronic diseases. Communicating effectively with the public, especially at-risk populations, to reduce their exposure to this environmental pollutant has become a public health priority. Although wildfire smoke risk communication research has also increased in the past decade, best practice guidance is limited, and most health communications do not adhere to health literacy principles: readability, accessibility, and actionability. This scoping review identifies peer-reviewed studies about wildfire smoke risk communications to identify gaps in research and evaluation of communications and programs that seek to educate the public.

METHODS

Four hundred fifty-one articles were identified from Web of Science and PubMed databases. After screening, 21 articles were included in the final sample for the abstraction process and qualitative thematic analysis. Ten articles were based in the US, with the other half in Australia, Canada, Italy, and other countries. Fifteen articles examined communication materials and messaging recommendations. Eight papers described communication delivery strategies. Eleven articles discussed behavior change. Six articles touched on risk communications for vulnerable populations; findings were limited and called for increasing awareness and prioritizing risk communications for at-risk populations.

RESULTS

This scoping review found limited studies describing behavior change to reduce wildfire smoke exposure, characteristics of effective communication materials and messaging, and communication delivery strategies. Literature on risk communications, dissemination, and behavior change for vulnerable populations was even more limited.

CONCLUSIONS

Recommendations include providing risk communications that are easy-to-understand and adapted to specific needs of at-risk groups. Communications should provide a limited number of messages that include specific actions for avoiding smoke exposure. Effective communications should use mixed media formats and a wide variety of dissemination strategies. There is a pressing need for more intervention research and effectiveness evaluation of risk communications about wildfire smoke exposure, and more development and dissemination of risk communications for both the general public and vulnerable populations.

Emergency risk communication and sensemaking during smoke events: A survey of practitioners

Emergency risk communication (ERC) for smoke emitted from major fires continues to challenge governments. During these events, practitioners (including scientific, communication, and emergency response government staff) are tasked with quickly making sense of the public health risks and the communication options available. Practitioners' sensemaking-the process of creating meaning from information about an unfolding emergency-is key to effective ERC. This article identifies the factors that ERC practitioners consider the most important to their sensemaking for smoke events. A survey of practitioners (n = 86) was conducted to elicit their views on the level of importance of 22 different factors (individual, organizational, and contextual) on their sensemaking. The results indicate that the majority of the factors tested are very important to practitioners. This finding likely reflects the multidimensional nature of emergency smoke events and provides evidence as to why practitioners are challenged when trying to make sense of emergency situations. Despite multiple factors being considered very important to practitioners, the time-limited nature of emergencies means that practitioners will inevitability be forced to prioritize in their sensemaking efforts. Our results also provide insight into practitioners' prioritization of different information sources. Specifically, practitioners prioritize their own knowledge and the knowledge of other practitioners. The two most important factors were information from other incident management stakeholders and the practitioners' past experience. Other information, including community-based and academic knowledge, appear to be of lower priority for practitioners. Based on the study results, recommendations for practice and future research are discussed.