Publications
In this article, PMCRI Executive Director Dr. Anne Cappola and Director of Research and Operations Karthika Cohen give an overview of various strategies that can be employed in medical communication, with a focus on the message, messenger, and social context. Approaches such as persuasive messaging through narratives, empathetic communication, prebunking interventions, the social norm approach, and harm reduction have been used with success in various fields such as public health, psychology, social science, and marketing. Cappola and Cohen provide a framework for the use of such strategies in the clinical setting. This introductory article kicked of the Communicating Medicine series in JAMA.
In this article, PMCRI Executive Director Dr. Anne Cappola and JAMA Editor-in-Chief Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo introduce the new JAMA series kicked off my Cappola and Cohen's article, Strategies to Improve Medical Communication. The goal of the series is to introduce clinicians to various approaches and strategies to enhance communication of medicine and health-related topics to patients.
In this article, Joseph N. Cappella, PhD (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) and Richard L. Street, Jr. (Department of Communication & Journalism, Texas A&M University) outline communication strategies that can be used by clinicians to enhance information gathering and exchange, motivate engagement by patients, and improve comprehension and information retention, thereby promoting acceptance and adherence.
In this article, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, PhD (Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania), Kevin Johnson, MD, MS (Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania), and Anne Cappola, MD, ScM (Perelman School of Medicine and PMCRI, University of Pennsylvania), recommend renaming the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a national system of self-reported events managed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The current name inaccurately suggests active surveillance and report validation, increasing public susceptibility to misconceptions about vaccine safety.
In this article, Sander van der Linden, PhD (Department of Psychology, School of Biology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom) and Jon Roozenbeek, PhD (Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom) describe effective methods for health professionals to psychologically "inoculate" patients against misinformation by enabling them to identify inaccurate health information by warning them about misleading medical information they are bound to encounter and avoid accepting it as fact. Such an approach can help prevent adoption and acceptance of inaccurate health information, avoid dangerous behaviors, and improve health.