MPH 632 Risk Communication Town Hall.

MPH-632-Town-Hall
  1. Title: MPH 632 Environmental and Occupational Health Risk Practice Lab Town Hall meeting.
  2. Background: Each group will conduct a town hall meeting, where one person in the group is the director of public health for a city in the USA, one person is a healthcare provider and director of that city’s hospital, and the other person will serve as the Mayor of that city.  You classmates from the other groups will serve as members of the general public and the instructor will serve as a reporter.  You must be prepared to answer questions using good risk communication practices.  It is strongly suggested that you message map your potential answers to expected questions.  The instructor will utilize questions that have been asked on these topics during real press conferences held in the past (so you can google them and review to see potential questions, please note that you will likely see some good examples of proper risk communication and some really bad examples where the risk communication was absolutely terrible). 
  3. Key study question(s)  
    • Identify the type of climate change disaster and which community is most likely at risk and why?
    • Identify and prioritize the people most at risk, and what are the primary objectives when dealing with these natural disasters caused by climate change?
    • Recommend health and safety interventions to make the community feel safe, and what are the factors crucial for effectively communicating risk communication in times of natural disaster?
  4. Findings: After the news report was played, it was discovered that wildfires in Northern California are the climate change topic affecting hundreds of people, burning their homes and business, and affecting families and their loved ones. Since it was set up as an actual event happening, a reporter played by Dr. Blando asks a series of questions and some locals to the five personnel trying to see if they will be disconnected and derailed from the actual messages that they are trying to deliver to address support, safety, help, and ensure that it is implemented. Moreover, risk communication plays a critical role in the town hall meeting. Not properly executing this type of communication will bring chaos and misunderstanding to the locals and create confusion in communication channels.
  5. Recommendations: My role as the physician I was asked about smoke inhalation and we where doing to prepare for people who where going to need oxygen. I worked with Brandon as the hospital director, it was decided that we would set up oxygen sites with extra tanks from near by hospitals to ensure that we would give care to all patients who where needing it.
  6. Public health significance: As a public health professional these situations can happen anywhere in the world. You can be involved and need to know how to handle any situation that may come your way. This is a great way to aid in the planning for communicating complex, technical environmental risk information in any high stress situation.