A series of recent polls have found that many Americans have grown increasingly frustrated with the pandemic and are pessimistic about its future.
Prepare and adapt your Covid-19 communication strategy with external and internal stakeholders
A poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that three-quarters of respondents said they feel tired and nearly three-quarters said they feel frustrated with the pandemic, while under half said they feel optimistic.
Many Americans seem to believe that Covid-19 is here to stay. In KFF's poll, 77% of respondents said it's inevitable that most people in the United States will get Covid-19, and in a separate poll from Yahoo News and YouGov, nearly half of respondents said Americans should "learn to live with" the pandemic "and get back to normal."
Americans are also growing increasingly frustrated with public health officials and President Joe Biden's response to the pandemic. In a poll from Pew Research Center that surveyed 10,237 adults between Jan. 24 and Jan. 30, around half of respondents said public health officials including CDC were doing a fair or poor job, a 10-point drop from more positive ratings from last summer.
Similarly, most respondents said they feel President Biden is doing a fair or poor job responding to the pandemic. However, the vast majority of respondents continued to say hospitals and medical centers in their area are doing either an excellent or good job responding to the pandemic.
Confidence in public health officials has hit its lowest point since the poll began in March 2020, with just half of respondents saying officials are doing a good or excellent job.
Many respondents also said they've felt confused due to changes to public health guidelines, and more than half of respondents said these changes have made them "less confident in public health officials' recommendations."
(Cohn, New York Times, 2/8; Beals, The Hill, 2/10; Tyson/Funk, Pew Research report, 2/9)
As omicron continues to surge throughout the country, constantly evolving information and regulatory guidance has made the already challenging task of communicating with stakeholders more difficult. As a result, health care leaders must clearly and efficiently communicate changing guidance and information about the state of the pandemic, rising case numbers, vaccine and booster availability, emerging treatments, internal policies, and more, with community members, patients, and staff.
Use this resource with internal and external stakeholders to audit your omicron communication strategy and prepare your strategy moving forward.
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