by Daniel J. Barnett, MD, MPH
Contending with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has presented an enormous challenge for public health response. However, the decreasing incidence of cases in certain regions of West Africa masks a looming challenge—namely, how do we manage the stigma attached to Ebola survivors as populations recover from this public health crisis? During and after an outbreak of emergent infectious disease, fear is itself a contagious...
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by Lisa Cobb
Ebola has shone a harsh light on the fact that our global resilience to a virus like Ebola rests on the resilience of the health systems in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Guinea.
by Kim Martin
The Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) is supporting the printing and distribution in Liberian schools of a comic book featuring a fictional soccer star that survived Ebola. Plans call for distributing 3,500 copies in schools along with a teacher guide, as well as selling it commercially. Developed by a team of graphic artists and storytellers in Liberia, the Ebola edition of “Tabella Tee – International...
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by Kathryn Bertram | Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs | Program Officer
A recent National Public Radio (NPR) story that aired on January 26 revealed how the Grand Imam of Guinea – a country still struggling with Ebola as rates begin to drop in Liberia and Sierra Leone – stepped up to the challenge of taking on a new role as Ebola messenger. Engaging faith leaders to promote important messages about Ebola and particularly safe burials has...
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by Lisa Cobb
If you were designing materials for Ebola survivors about sexual transmission, what should you keep in mind?
by Jarret Cassaniti | Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs | Program Officer
What an old Christmas song can teach us about stigma in the age of ebola.
by Lisa Cobb
Health communication has often drawn from the discipline of marketing in conceptualizing how we do what we do, especially when it comes to health issues where people need to use a product or service. Health marketing is concerned primarily with what people do. Another discipline that is increasingly recognized as crucial to the fight against Ebola is anthropology. If marketing is concerned with what people...
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by Charles Stokes | President and CEO, CDC Foundation
As the largest Ebola epidemic in history continues to afflict portions of West Africa, the need to control the spread of the virus is greater than ever. Ebola is a threat to people, health systems and economies around the globe. But West African communities in particular are being hammered by Ebola as a result of already-strained healthcare systems, mistrust of healthcare workers and fear and...
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by Lisa Cobb
The journal Nature has a special on Ebola, collecting all its reporting on the virus in one place. One of those articles, Models overestimate Ebola cases, is on the failure of mathematical models to accurately predict the epidemic’s course. In an interesting letter responding to that article, the authors credit “altered cultural perception” that allowed for behavior change, changing the course of the epidemic for the...
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by Lisa Cobb
Question: What is the difference between these two messages? “Ebola is real! If you get it, you’ll die!” and “Ebola is real! If you seek treatment you have a fifty-per-cent chance of recovery?” Answer: Theory. The Extended Parallel Process Model, or EPPM, to be exact. These messages come from a great article in the New Yorker on the use of “culture makers” (i.e. entertainers, community...
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