Prefatory Note

This report from the Subcommittee on Risk Communication and Education is intended to address health risk communication polices and practices within PHS agencies. As such, the Subcommittee looked broadly at institutional policies and practices. A result of this approach is the absence in this report of recommendations on how to prepare specific health risk communications. In particular, there are two issues bearing on the preparation of individual health risk communications that this report does not address.

When to Communicate—PHS agencies are often faced with the difficult problem of knowing when there is enough scientific information to warrant a health risk communication. Integral to this question is the quality of the scientific information available to the agency. How good is the information, and is it enough to support a health risk communication? There are no simple answers to these questions. Each agency must determine when a health risk communication is required based on its statutory mandates and science policies.

Scientific Uncertainty—A complicating point in satisfying the public's demand for reliable and meaningful information on environmental hazards is "scientific uncertainty." Frequently, government agencies are faced with the dilemma of having to acknowledge and explain uncertainty to a public that perceives scientific findings as the product of a process that is precise, repeatable, and reliable. Moreover, the public often associates correlation as being the same as causality. As a result, agencies are faced with the difficult task of trying to say what their scientific data mean, as well as the data's limitations and uncertainties.

Further, government agencies must shape their communications to take account of a wide range of public attitudes and demands about the cause, nature, magnitude, and consequences of specific environmental risk factors. The considerable diversity in public interest will complicate how uncertainty is conveyed in a particular health risk communication. Because there is little guidance on how to communicate uncertainty in health risk communications, the Subcommittee has undertaken a project on that subject. The findings and recommendations from the Subcommittee's study will be available at a later date.