Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication in a Pandemic: A Model for Building Capacity and Resilience of Minority Communities

As public health agencies prepare for pandemic influenza, it is evident from our experience with Hurricane Katrina that these events will occur in the same social, historical, and cultural milieu in which marked distrust of government and health disparities already exist. This article grapples with the challenges of crisis and emergency risk communication with special populations during a pandemic. Recognizing that targeting messages to specific groups poses significant difficulties at that time, this article proposes a model of community engagement, disaster risk education, and crisis and emergency risk communication to prepare minority communities and government agencies to work effectively in a pandemic, build the capacity of each to respond, and strengthen the trust that is critical at such moments. Examples of such engagement and potential strategies to enhance trust include tools familiar to many health educators.