Public Participation &

For more information or advise contact:

Salim Vohra
Principal: Public Health, HIA and Stakeholder Consultation
Health Risk
Communication in the
Peter Brett Associates
47/51 Great Suffolk Street
Southwark London SE1 0PB

Tel: +44 (0)20 7981 9900 Fax: +44 (0)20 7922 1185
Email: svohra@pba.co.uk
Age of the
Consulting local communities can be a difficult process. But it
needn’t be so.
Communities are not scary, incomprehensible and
unpredictable aliens from outer space! They are just like you
and me. They have the same aspirations and dreams and the
same worries and anxieties for their families and
neighbourhoods that we all have.
Here are twenty top tips to help you make community
consultation a rewarding, involving and engaging experience.
Do:
 Know your audience.
 Make sure you know why you are consulting, engaging or
involving.
 Make sure you let everyone else know why you are
consulting, engaging or
involving.
 Be truthful even if that means saying “I don’t know”.
 Then find out what you don’t know and get back to them with
an answer.
 Be yourself.
 Plan for how things might go wrong.
 Smile, make eye contact and be warm.
 Recognise that consultation and involvement generates
uncertainty and
unpredictability – for you and them.
Listen, listen and listen.
Don’t:
 Ever promise what you can’t deliver.
 Start consulting without getting agreement on a clear plan of
action.
 Assume that everyone in the team knows what they’re
supposed to be doing.
 Be disrespectful to people or their views.
 Lose your cool.
 Walk away leaving people feeling dissatisfied or aggrieved.
 Finish the consultation without letting people know what the
next steps are.
 Get scared. Each consultation is unique and we all make
mistakes.
 Take comments at face value. If you have the chance, ask
Risk communication is an interactive process of
information exchange and opinion among individuals, groups,
and institutions. It provides multiple messages about the
nature of risk and other messages, not strictly about risk, that
express concerns, opinions, or reactions to risk messages or to
legal and institutional arrangements for risk management.
The United States National Research Council (NRC 1989)
Seven Cardinal Rules of Risk Communication (Covello and Allen 1988)
Accept and involve the public as a partner.
Your goal is to produce an informed public, not to defuse public
concerns or replace actions.
Plan carefully and evaluate your efforts.
Different goals, audiences and media require different actions.
Listen to the public's specific concerns.
People often care more about trust, credibility, competence, fairness and
empathy than about statistics and details.
Be honest, frank, and open.
Trust and credibility are difficult to obtain and once lost they are almost
impossible to regain.
Work with other credible sources.
Conflicts and disagreements among organisations make communication
with the public much more difficult.
Meet the needs of the media.
The media are usually more interested in politics than risk, simplicity
than complexity, danger than safety.
Speak clearly and with compassion.
Never let your efforts prevent your acknowledging the tragedy of an
illness, injury, or death. People can understand risk information, but they
may still not agree with you; some people will not be satisfied but still
keep listening.
Checklist for Communicating with the Public (Chess and Hance 1994)
Why are we communicating? 
Who is our audience/s? 
What do our audiences want to know? 
What do we want to get across? 
How will we communicate? 
How will we listen? 
How well did we respond? 
Who will carry out the plans? When? 
What problems or barriers have we planned for? 
Have we succeeded? 