Modelo de medición de la gestión de la comunicación en las crisis sanitarias

Resum

ABSTRACT Health is one of the main priorities of the citizens living in developed countries and its interest in knowing risks, innovations, tips and care facilities has increased in the last decade. This demand for information was reflected in the media, which have increased the coverage of news related to biomedical issues in the last decade. Within this extremely newsworthy, we need to highlight health crises. In these cases, the perceived risk of society is an important factor to be considered by health authorities because it is the main trigger for panic attacks and losing control of the situation. Since citizens are informed of health crises through the mass media, and they attach great importance in their agenda to news-called 'high standard', as in the case of a health emergency, it should be a priority for appointed politicians in the health area to have a communication plan to mitigate society anticipated fear attacks and to avoid, when possible, a parallel media crisis. This paper argues the importance on how the communication management of health crisis can have a decisive influence on the development of the problem, both in politics and clinical outbreak management and in the social perception of the threat, with economic, social and labor implications. To evaluate this influence, we propose a model for measuring the quality of communication during a health crisis using as an example the case of Legionnaires' disease epidemic occurred in Murcia in 2001, through media coverage that published the newspaper La Verdad that took place between the 9th and 13th July. The implementation of the five key variables in risk communication in this case study, as established by international bodies like the World Health Organization, proves that as a result of mistakes in managing the communication of that epidemic influenced negatively in its development. Although clinical management was successful in obtaining a very low rate of mortality compared with other epidemics of legionellosis, contradictory statements, the late reporting of information, the transmission of wrong data, concealment of information or duplication of spokespersons shot social perception of risk and distrust of citizens towards public authorities. Consequently, the emphasis of the communication covered by the newspaper on the epidemic coverage was mainly focused on health official's mistakes rather than in medical achievements. As a conclusion, this thesis defends the need for managers of public health administrations to articulate adequate planning prior to publicly notifying outbreaks of health crises.