It’s Time to Change Rhode Island’s Pandemic Communications Strategy - Donna Childs

It’s Time to Change Rhode Island’s Pandemic Communications Strategy - Donna Childs

Last week, in a live broadcast from Providence’s Convention Center, CNN reported the exploding levels of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in Rhode Island, as the state achieved the world’s #1 ranking for level of infection, a result that was not unexpected. Governor Raimondo attributed the rising infection rates to her inability to communicate the risks and motivate compliance with health and safety measures, stating at a recent press briefing “I have been utterly ineffective at getting people to follow the rules in their homes.” She is not alone in her frustration as Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker also attributed the dangerous spike in COVID-19 infections to unsafe informal indoor gatherings. “No one wants to be lectured to, and I get that,” Governor Baker said. “But there is a legit cause and effect thing going on here.”

Rhode Islanders have opined on the need for more effective communications to address the pandemic. Political strategist Rob Horowitz suggested that the state find money in a tight budget to retain a public relations firm to save lives and livelihoods. State Senator Samuel Bell called for a “robust state PR campaign to encourage proper COVID safety protocols.” Unfortunately, selling risk reduction measures isn’t like selling a consumer brand or even a social marketing campaign. That’s why p.r. firms have consistently failed to deliver. The dial on our level of national disaster preparedness, for example, has not moved since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, despite the fact that the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to partner with the Advertising Council to sponsor public service announcements aimed at motivating better risk practices. 

My industry background is in reinsurance, which does what Madison Avenue does not: on a daily basis, we think about the unthinkable. Reinsurance is the ultimate risk capital providing coverage for extreme losses, such as hurricanes and even global pandemics.  In the the reinsurance world, claims start in the hundreds of millions of dollars and often many billions of dollars. I was formerly a senior executive of the world’s largest reinsurer of life-health and property-casualty risks. As we are on the front lines of global pandemics and climate change, we have a strong financial interest in communicating risk reduction information in a manner that motivates compliance!

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Such communication requires striking a delicate balance between conveying the seriousness of a threat while refraining from sensationalism. It requires empathy to appreciate how challenging it can be to acquire new habits with the ability to identify and deliver some benefits of change. And it requires a realistic recognition of the limits of formal authority.  At Prisere LLC, we deliver these results world-wide for clients such as the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and even my former employer, the Swiss Reinsurance Group. While delivering a comprehensive communications strategy is beyond the scope of an op-ed, I’d like to recommend several proven good risk communication practices that the state should consider.

Leverage communications practices that have been effective in motivating compliance to reduce risk to other extreme threats.

My colleague Alejandro Witschi and I developed guidelines for communicating disaster risk reduction information in the Caribbean region. On behalf of our client, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, we developed a communications strategy and delivered the training needed for successful implementation. The Caribbean region consists of small island developing states with relatively small and undiversified economies, principally tourism and shipping, at risk of rising sea levels. In other words, it’s not unlike Rhode Island. We had to consider that both lives and livelihoods are at risk from disasters such as hurricanes and that motivating compliance with good risk practice is always a challenge. The good practices we successfully implemented in the Caribbean in the context of a weather-related disaster could be adapted for COVID safety communications in Rhode Island; in particular: enabling technology to support communications, leveraging the immediacy of social media, communicating innovative partnerships, accessing alternative communications channels and micro-targeting content.

Promote peer-to-peer learning for risk awareness and identify specific benefits for good practice.

Governor Baker was correct when he said that no one wants to be on the receiving end of a lecture. That is why I communicate information about best risk practice to motivate small businesses to take action as a conversation with a small business peer (albeit one with a highly unusual background!).  The CEO of the Association of Small Business Development Centers contributed the Foreword to the second edition of my book Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best: Disaster Preparedness and Recovery for Small Businesses (Wiley). Each year, the Association serves about one million small businesses across the fifty states. The third edition will be published in the early part of 2021 and includes pandemic information, but the content remains focused on specific benefits of implementing good risk practices – such as winning more corporate contracts. In connection with their business continuity planning, large enterprises are evaluating the resilience of their supply chains. Their due diligence explicitly considers the disaster resilience measures of prospective vendors. Companies as diverse as Duke Energy and Xerox review the business continuity plans of small businesses before awarding them contracts. My book and associated training help small businesses win contracts and grow revenues and employment for having implemented vetted, robust resilience plans accepted by major corporations. This type of approach should be adopted locally. The messaging on COVID safety protocols in all 50 states, but particularly Rhode Island and Massachusetts, is far too negative in tone and less effective for lacking the right partnerships and for not offering specific, positive benefits of better risk and safety practices.

Deliver systems to support new habits.

Habits are hard to change and most of us are not accustomed to extensive hand washing or mask wearing. People may, from time to time, engage in practices that were once normal but have become very risky in the pandemic era. Developing systems to support safer practices allows those practices to become habits thereby increasing compliance.

Last year we had developed infographics on the use of masks, well before the CDC recommended mask use, based on the information we were gathering from our clients in Asia. We recommended systems to make it easy to develop new habits. For example, I have two travel-sized tubes of hand sanitizer: one for my handbag (men would place theirs in their jacket pockets) and the other goes in the cup-holder of my car. The full-size hand sanitizer sits on my desk. This is a very simple solution to ensure that I won’t forget to bring hand sanitizer wherever I go.  We communicate COVID safety information in simple infographics and share it with small businesses to distribute to their employees, families, suppliers and customers. Offering recommended solutions to facilitate compliance with health protocols is far more effective than demonizing those who don’t comply.

At a recent COVID press briefing, a journalist asked Governor Raimondo what she would do if her two-week “pause” of the state’s economy failed to reduce the acceleration of the virus. Her answer was one that no one with a reinsurance background wants to hear: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Governor Baker took a similar position. In the risk management business, we are preparing for the next, entirely predictable, threat as delay means a “tail” that can further devastate lives and livelihoods.

In reinsurance, the concept of the “tail” refers to the period of time between when a hazard is created, and when the losses are fully realized. Pandemics are long-tail risks, both for their morbidity and mortality effects and attendant economic consequences. In other words, our models show that infections and economic conditions will continue to worsen in RI before they begin to recover.  Even if local conditions remain static, small businesses will continue to fail, as they exhaust the resources that have allowed them to hang on to this point. But conditions generally don’t remain static. Any other hazard, such as a gas outage along the lines of what Newport County had experienced in 2019, or a routine fire or flood will amplify business failures, unemployment, and health and safety risks (as people are displaced) as COVID-depleted businesses have fewer resources to cope. Indeed, we have seen this pain in the Gulf Coast states as this year’s Atlantic storm season was particularly severe. The lack of penetration of good pandemic risk practices is taking its toll in jobs, businesses and lives. It drains public financial resources for health and unemployment costs. 

If we delay action until we arrive at the bridge just ahead of us, we may find that we have fewer options to safely cross it. That is why now is the time to “crop” the tail risk by using a small portion of remaining federal CARES funds to invest in resilience solutions to communicate risk information, motivate compliance and offer tangible positive benefits, such as increased economic competitiveness along with health and safety, for doing so.

Donna Childs founded Prisere LLC to develop capacity for climate and disaster risk resilience, building on her previous experience as a senior executive in the reinsurance industry. Prisere LLC was named one of the 50 most innovative start-ups by Kauffman Foundation during Global Entrepreneurship Week in its first year.