While a lot of attention has understandably been focused on the Senate Impeachment Trial of President Trump, we learned that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirmed the first case of the novel Wuhan coronavirus. The patient involved was described as having a history of traveling to China and started to show symptoms four days after arriving from China in the U.S.
Images of health workers in full protective gear and the announcement that travelers from Wuhan – a city of 11 million people – to the U.S. will be required to undergo health screenings immediately brought back memories of the Ebola outbreak in Dallas in the fall of 2014.
As The Dallas Morning News reported, in the story, ‘Looking back, Dallas Ebola crisis showed cost of fear, value of leadership,’ “We learned that the buffering protection of the two great oceanic moats sheltering the continent is gone, that the deadliest sickness on the globe is just a plane ride away.”
The same story pointed to “bureaucratic bungling, populist mistrust of government officialdom, and lavish doses of Internet crazy talk,” for spawning a public panic most of us had never experienced before, with the possible exception of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the anthrax attacks later that fall.
Obviously, the public relations function can play an important role in helping healthcare organizations communicate internally – which the Ebola outbreak revealed is often where problems are amplified or extinguished – as well as externally to serve and protect the public’s interest and to position the responding organization as caring, trustworthy, professional and responsive.
There have been a number of excellent analyses of the PR implications of the Dallas Ebola outbreak, including, “‘Reputation Recovery’: The Ebola Patient Crisis in Dallas,” by Kathleen Lewton, APR, Principle with Lewton, Seekins & Trester LLC, published in The Public Relations Strategist. She offers several valuable insights, including:
Wait until you’re 100-percent sure that the information you release is accurate. After watching the Governor of Washington’s first media briefing on the coronavirus case and the President's statements on CNBC, I worry that the effusively positive, “Nothing to see here; everything’s fine!” statements are not aligned with just how little is known. Until this week, public health officials didn't even know it could be spread through person-to-person contact. Later in the Governor's briefing, health officials admitted that they still aren't sure how long the coronavirus incubates in the body before symptoms appear, which means (at least to me) that their high level of confidence that nobody has been infected is unfounded. How can they be confident, really?
Be proactive and be responsive. Lewton’s advice centers around the fact that the media’s appetite for information is insatiable. As long as an organization is releasing the information it has that serves the public interest, I wouldn’t worry too much about journalists complaining about a lack of transparency. Their complaints should not pressure you into doing things you could later regret. The biggest difference today versus in 2014 is the outsized influence of social media, especially in spreading disinformation. I would be much more focused on responding to and correcting inaccurate statements on Twitter and other social channels than on whether a journalist feels slighted.
Communicating is critical, but is no substitute for training. This was part of Texas Health Presbyterian’s Congressional testimony and relates to the fact that hospital staff were not trained in fundamental aspects of Ebola patient care prior to admitting patient zero. Based on my conversations with healthcare organizations in the years since, it is my understanding that much more training in dealing with patients with infectious disease has been implemented throughout the U.S.
If you make mistakes, apologize as soon as possible. The first Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, was misdiagnosed and released back into the community despite his symptoms and recent travel to an area besieged with Ebola. Texas Health Presbyterian withheld information about his diagnosis from the primary nurse caring for him then released personal information about her after she was diagnosed. When Mr. Duncan passed away, news media got the word before his loved ones. There were lots of mistakes, but relatively little in terms of caring and compassion from Texas Health Presbyterian.
All great advice and all worth revisiting as the U.S. again finds itself responding to a global outbreak of unknown proportions. Good luck to all those who are on the front lines!
Below is some additional recommended reading:
‘Reputation Recovery’” The Ebola Patient Crisis in Dallas
The Public Relations Strategist
Looking back, Dallas Ebola crisis showed cost of fear, value of leadership
The Dallas Morning News
What the Texas Ebola case teaches about crisis communication
Modern Healthcare
Free of Ebola but not fear
The Dallas Morning News
A "PR Pawn" Confounds the Public Relations Burnishing of Texas Health Resources and its CEO
Health Care Renewal