Public engagement with pre-incident information materials for initial response to a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) incident
Citation: Carter H, Drury J, Amlôt R. Recommendations for improving public engagement with pre-incident information materials for initial response to a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) incident: A systematic review. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. 2020;51:101796.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: National Institute for Health Research – Health Protection Research Unit (NIHR HPRU) in Emergency Preparedness and Response (UK).
What is this? The harms arising from chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) incidents might be reduced by providing the public with pre-incident information to improve preparedness and response.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for studies of the effects of pre-incident information on public preparedness before CBRN incidents. They restricted their searches to articles published in English and did the search in June 2019. They included 3 systematic reviews and 32 quantitative, 6 qualitative and 3 mixed methods studies.
What was found: Providing educational pre-incident materials increased preparedness knowledge, behaviour and intentions among the public.
The effects of pre-incident education to improve CBRN incident preparedness are uncertain over the medium to longer-term because of a lack of evidence.
Implications: The authors of the review provided a set of recommendations on the information to include, the methods to communicate this and the need for higher intensity interventions pre-incident educational materials. They concluded that future research should examine effects over the long-term and assess the public’s knowledge and misconceptions about hazardous agents and CBRN disasters when designing public information interventions.
Other considerations: The authors of the review did not discuss their findings in the context of issues relating to health equity.
This summary was prepared by Andrew Aoun, checked by Yasmeen Saeed and Cristián Mansilla, and finalized by Mike Clarke.