HERIC 2D
Health Risk Communication: Design and digital communication of official public health sources to guide citizens in pandemic situations
This project is funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under reference number 2022.06008.PTDC.
The Project
This project's main objective is to improve the risk communication in Health in situations of pandemic, by official public health institutions of the Portuguese Government and State. For this, an evaluation of the design and digital communication of the different online platforms (website and/or apps) related to the COVID-19 pandemic created by official Public Health institutions to communicate and interact with citizens, will be developed. The selection of communication sciences as the scientific area and Information Sciences (social aspects) as sub-area resulted from the intersection between the research theme (risk communication) and scope (public and social issues), the research strategies chosen to pursuit the objectives and the multidisciplinary research team we have gathered, composed by researchers from complementary areas of study, such as Communication Sciences, Sociology and Design.
Objectives
The starting point of this project is finding, through available data and literature, that health information available online is fundamental for the promotion of well-being, more specifically, in public health risk information.
How this communication and its dissemination was carried out, and whether its objectives were achieved, or not, (e.g.: the implementation of effective health risk communication), are some of the issues that this project is set out to identify, and, also, propose possible solutions. By crossing quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the proposed methodological strategy allows, on one hand, the assessment of the practical results of the communication of health risk carried out by the responsible entities of the health sector in Portugal. On the other hand, it allows us to perceive effectively if this communication had effects, if it was useful, if the citizens' perception is, or not, equivalent to the objectives of the communication carried out.
Moreover, the integration of interviews with public health professionals also allows the intersection of expert knowledge with the need to communicate with non-expert citizens, which are also the main target group of risk communication in public health. This study proposes, in an approach through the perspective of Communication Sciences, Sociology and Design, a complete assessment of the impact and level of efficiency that these platforms had on their target audience, the citizens.
In addition to this assessment, a set of recommendations will be proposed for future improvement, through a compilation of guidelines (or Guidebook for Good Health Practices), and the scientific results obtained will become available in an accessible language for citizens and for the national entities in Public Health sector, in order to prevent future situations.
Team
Rita Maria Espanha Pires Chaves Torrado da Silva
Lead Researcher
CIES-Iscte
Associate Professor with Aggregation at Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. Director of the Master's Degree in Communication, Culture and Information Technologies and Deputy Director of the Department of Sociology. Researcher at CIES-Iscte, she is currently carrying out research in the areas of “Communication, Information Technology and Health”, “Health Literacy”, “Generations and Communication Technology”. Member of Iscte's Health Mission Team. ERASMUS Coordinator in the Department of Sociology. She is Associated Editor of Observatório magazine (OBS*- http://obs.obercom.pt/index.php/obs), a member of the Scientific Committee of Edicciones-InCom-UAB and of the Editorial Committee of Revista de Comunicación y Salud (www.revistadecomunicacionysalud.org). She is the author of several books and articles in the areas of Health and Communication, Network Communication and Youth and Media in Portugal.
Nuno Martins
Co-principal Investigator
Institute of Research in Design, Media, and Culture (ID+)
Nuno Martins holds a PhD in Digital Media (2013) at the University of Porto, as a doctoral fellow of the UT Austin-Portugal Program of the Foundation for Science and Technology. In 2020 he completed a post-doctoral degree in Design. His research work has focused on Design for digital media, with particular interest in the study of digital solutions for the citizen, namely community networks and practices. He also holds a MA in Multimedia Art (2007) and a BA in Communication Design (2003) at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. In 2002, during his undergraduate degree, he was a fellow of the Socrates / Erasmus Program, having studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy - Hogeschool Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.
Ana Barros
Team Member
Portuguese Society of Pneumology (SPP)
Ana Barros received her PhD degree in Teaching and Dissemination of Science with the dissertation: "Health Communication: A New Model to Promote Cancer Prevention Campaigns at Schools" in 2015 and a BSc in Biology from the Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto in 2009. Currently, she is a researcher at SPP - Sociedade Portuguesa de Pneumologia (Portuguese Pulmonology Society). Previously, she was a post-doc researcher at the communication of i3S, University of Porto, Portugal, working on the project Bridging the Cancer Communication Gap – an integrative approach to improve communication between patients and healthcare professionals in a cancer care unit, funded by FCT (Ref: SFRH/BPD) (2016-2023) and a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in the area of health literacy and communication applied to cancer prevention.
Daniel Brandão
Team Member
Center for Communication and Society Studies (CECS)
Daniel Brandão holds a PhD in Digital Media, in the Domain of Audiovisual and Interactive Content Creation, at the University of Porto (2014). In the scope of his PhD he has developed the project Museum of Ransom (www.museudoresgate.org), a participatory website that collects videos made by citizens about the city's daily life, aiming at legitimizing their cultural heritage vocation. Afterwards, he co-created Citadocs, a collaborative mini-documentary project, born in Future Places Medialab for Citizenship. He is also the co-Principal Researcher of "bYou", a project funded by FCT that aims to study on children and young people´s experiences and expressions of the media through participatory methodologies. He also integrates the research teams of other two funded research projects, "Audire" and "Echo".
Branco Di Fátima
Team Member
LabCom - UBI
É jornalista e escritor de não ficção. Doutorado em Ciências da Comunicação (Iscte), é investigador contratado pelo LabCom – Universidade da Beira Interior (UBI). Já contribuiu com mais de 15 veículos de comunicação social, como Aventuras da História, IA Notícias, HuffPost, UAI e Record.
É autor do livro-reportagem Dias de Tormenta (2019), além de organizador das coletâneas Hate Speech on Social Media (2023), Internet – Comunicação em Rede (2013) e Outros Olhares (2008). Já publicou mais de 60 trabalhos científicos e integrou as equipas de projetos financiados por organismos nacionais e internacionais.
Francisco Garcia
Team Member
CIES-Iscte
Francisco Garcia is currently a Communication Science PhD student conducting a study on Health Risk Communication, more specifically, about the Public Health Risk Communication addressed to Seniors within the scope of COVID-19 in the Municipality of Cascais (Portugal). Garcia’s interest in the study of seniors and their relationship with technology goes back to the year of 2018, when he presented his master’s thesis in Communication, Culture and Technologies of Information about New Media Literacy: Seniors and the Access to Portugal’s Online Finance Portal. Besides the fields of interest mentioned above, the author intends on working in broader subjects such as: information literacy, health literacy, journalism, new media, and audiences.
Duarte Vital Brito
Project Consultant
Public Health Doctor
Doctor specializing in public health, since 2024, at the Amélia Leitão Public Health Unit, ULS Lisboa Ocidental. He develops various activities that integrate health planning, communication in health services and communication for behavioral change in the population. He is a trainer and consultant in health communication, data visualization and infodemic management, teaching classes on these topics at various universities. He is the founder of Academia de Comunicação em Saúde, a brand dedicated to training in health communication. He has a master's degree in Public Health and Development (Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical - Universidade Nova de Lisboa), a postgraduate degree in Data Visualization (ISCTE-IUL and Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa) and a postgraduate degree in Public Health Communication (Faculdade de Ciências Humanas - Universidade Católica de Lisboa). He is the author of several book chapters and articles in the field of health communication.
Karel van der Waarde
Project Consultant
Graphic Design Teacher
Karel van der Waarde studied graphic design in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. He started a design - research consultancy in Belgium in 1995 specializing in the testing of pharmaceutical information. (www.graphicdesignresearch.com). He publishes and lectures about visual information. He is a life-fellow of the Communications Research Institute (Melbourne), a board member of International Institute for Information Design (Vienna) and editorial board member of several journals.
Ana Pereira
Collaborator
IPCA Student
Master's student in Digital Design at the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA). Graduated in Design from the University of Aveiro (2022).
Inês Costa
Collaborator
IPCA Student
Master's student in Digital Design at the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA). Graduated in New Communication Technologies from the University of Aveiro (2022).
Inês Freitas
Collaborator
IPCA Student
Master's student in Digital Design at the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA). Graduated in Communication Sciences from the University of Minho (2021).
Francisca Abreu
Collaborator
Iscte-iul Student
Francisca Abreu is currently studying for a Master's degree in Health Services Management and is working on a dissertation on Risk Communication in Public Health, more specifically on the Impact of risk communication in public health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal, in the years 2020 and 2021 - Contributions to the management of public health entities. Francisca has always been interested in management, so she did her degree in Industrial Management and Logistics. Her interest in risk communication arose as part of a course in the first year of her master's degree. Her curiosity and preference for these topics culminated in the subject of her dissertation.