Pros and cons of public meetings as a delivery method

Vincent T. Covello, Ph.D.
Director of the Center for Risk Communication

The public meeting is one of the things that first comes to mind is a way by which to share the information with the public. The problem is that public meetings function very well as one-way communication but often they fail us as two-way communication. The goals of communication typically are to enhance knowledge, to improve understanding and to establish dialog. Often public meetings in a high concern, high stress situation tend to be not supportive of those goals and risk communication. Often they lead to grandstanding and therefore the public health official rather than going first to the public meetings should think about alternatives to public meetings such as information exchanges, such as hotlines, such as personal visits. We can establish a one on one dialog or a small group dialog as opposed to having a dialog with a very large number of upset individuals.