On September 4, GSL Associate Director Patrick Fafard, GSL Research Fellow Lindsay Wilson, GSL Investigator Adèle Cassola, and GSL Director Steven Hoffman published a qualitative study in CMAJ Open examining the public messaging of provincial chief medical officers of health (CMOHs) in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic (January 21, 2020 – March 31, 2020).
In the study, the authors conducted a qualitative study of news releases from Canadian provincial government websites and found four broad thematic themes emerge:
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Emergency preparedness
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Mandates and recommendations
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Reassurance of the public
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Promoting public responsibility
Analyzing the results, Fafard et al. conclude that messaging across jurisdictions was generally consistent, and variations in the tone and timing of CMOH messaging aligned with different and changing realities across contexts.
Watch co-author Lindsay Wilson explain how the team went about this research in a video on the right.