To reduce health risk caused by environmental hazards, the Seoul Metropolitan Government(SMG) implemented adaptation measures that provide information on ehvironmental hazards, policy status, and behavioral tips. One of the adaptation actions, SMG provides informations on health risk and behavioral tips about particulate matter and ozone pollution. However, the use of the informations are low due to low accessibility, difficulty in contents, and unmet the nees of citizens. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an efficient environmental health risk communication system to increase citizens' awareness of environmental health and their use as information to reduce health risk.
In this study, as a system for efficient environmental health risk communication, three steps were proposed: communication preparation, strategy establishment, implementation, and evaluation/feedback. Prior to communication preparation, five basic principles were established to increase citizens' environmental health information and policy reliability, and to induce policy participation. The five basic principles are accurate information provision, rapid response, trust relationship establishment, consensus formation, and action.
In the preparation stage, to derive topics that require communication, the environmental health status should be diagnosed based on various data such as environmental health indicators, citizen and expert perception surveys, civil complaints, and media trends. In the second stage,
In the strategy establishment stage, establish the object and detailed goals, organize the communication team, define the communication target, and select the methods for risk communication. The detailed goals for risk communication should be measurable to evaluate at the end of the communication. The communication team is organized to include various stakeholders, including experts and citizens in each field. The communication target should be definded. After then developed the delivered message, and select pathway and method for communication with consideration of the characteristics and preferences of the target.
Risk communication shall be carried out in consideration of various forms and methods, such as providing relevant information through on-offline media and local meetings, or conducting education program through a small gathering. In the evaluation and feedback process should be evaluate for the overall and step-by-step risk communication process, and the possibility of political feedback or implementation of action plans should be reviewed.
And last, all process for environmental health risk communication and evaluation and feedback result should be transparently disclosed to improve citizens' trust and voluntary policy participation.