Communications Strategies for the COVID-19 Pandemic from Abt Associates

"Innovation, creativity, and relevance should be the hallmarks of a COVID-19 risk communications campaign."

The COVID-19 pandemic has demanded changes in personal and community norms and behaviours. For this reason, Abt Associates calls on the United States (US) government to develop and implement a comprehensive social behaviour change and risk communications campaign. The below summary gleans some key points from a white paper titled "Effective and Innovative Communications Strategies for the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Abt Can Help" [PDF], in which Abt outlines strategies for a COVID-19 communication campaign, grounding them in the frameworks and principles that explain how and why people look for and use health information to manage risk of infection.

The elements of a risk communications campaign, which could be applicable to other contexts, include:

• Message development - This involves developing, testing, and disseminating health messages focused on perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, and barriers. A combination of approaches could give the government rapid, action-oriented feedback about messages and materials:
  • Analysis of real-time social media engagement to guide initial development of messages and concepts.
  • A/B comparative social media testing of campaign messages and creative concepts through partner Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter channels.
  • Online surveys to rank message concepts, deliver feedback on campaign messages, and obtain initial data on an audience's knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAPs).
  • Online interviews and focus groups to generate in-depth understanding of anticipated KAPs that could result from campaign exposure,
  • Identification of different sources of secondary data to understand an audience's media habits and KAPs. Publicly available, non-proprietary market data may offer complementary audience insights.
• Audience outreach - A multi-component media campaign has the advantage of repeatedly exposing individuals to health messages within different environments and where they learn best.
  • Scanning the online landscape around COVID-19 is necessary for campaign planning. This analysis and report could include: trending hashtags relevant to COVID-19 and prevention or testing; misinformation about the transmission and prevention of COVID-19; social influencers' remarks on prevention of COVID-19; and audience interaction - e.g., with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) handles on Twitter and Facebook.
  • After identifying audiences by geography and demographics, national research on where audiences consume information enables the government to direct the right message to the right audiences.
  • Messages about COVID-19 should be tailored to audiences during message development and campaign planning. For example, members of the public who still do not consider COVID-19 a "real threat" will need messages about the risk in multiple channels, including out of home. Social media provide insights directly from the audience as captured through engagement metrics (e.g., likes, shares). For instance, messages on Facebook may perform better with older adults than they would on Instagram.
  • Abt recommends reaching out to community-based organisations, the private sector, universities, and faith-based organisations to disseminate campaign messages through their own media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and email. In addition, as social distancing moves events online, the government could explore partnerships with webinar companies, publishers, entertainers, schools, and universities.
• Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) - An effective M&E strategy would enable the government to identify lessons learned quickly and obtain rapid feedback loops with critical information for measurable campaign improvements. Elements of such a strategy could include:
  • Media monitoring through social and digital media analytics, landing page web-traffic, partner media, and outreach data;
  • Behavioural intent studies conducted through, for example, Google Health (using YouTube and Search), Nielsen Vizu, and Facebook and Instagram.
  • Online survey panels, which can include audiences recruited from large, pre-existing, opt-in internet panels.
  • Random-digit dialing surveys, preferably using both cell phones and land lines to ensure wider coverage (Abt recommends the use of address-based sampling and multi-mode data collection strategies as part of a survey design).
• Strategies for overcoming complacency - Fatigue around messaging, risk, and compassion can decrease behaviour change, possibly triggering a recurrence of infection as the crisis evolves. Suggested assessment tools include Google Trends, a free tool that could uncover complacency of COVID-19 preventive behaviours, and a gap analysis. The latter, which could include previous message testing data, media monitoring campaign data, survey data that measures KAPs, and a scan of reports (e.g., from the CDC), can quickly deliver needed insights to inform a refresh of campaign messages and media tactics. For example, as social distancing and mobility restrictions lessen, high-visibility tactics like billboards or bus shelter posters could reach large audiences and head off the potential for complacency.
• Technological solutions - Customisable technological solutions include data visualisation and reporting, development of mobile applications, and machine learning.

The remaining pages of the document explore how Abt has used the strategies described above in its work on pandemic influenza communication planning and Zika readiness in the United States (US), behaviour change around malaria and tuberculosis (TB) in places like Africa and Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, and other examples of outbreak response, pandemic preparedness, and risk communications.