Communicating the Environmental Health Risk Assessment Process: Formative Evaluation and Increasing Comprehension through Visual Design

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: The goal of this project was to design plain language and effective visuals that can be used when communicating the risk assessment process excess cancer risk due to environmental exposures. A community factsheet entitled, ‘Understanding Environmental Health Risk Assessment’ was developed and a formative evaluation approach was used with a set of representative users from rural and urban neighborhoods that neighbor Superfund sites to determine the functionality and accessibility of information. We hypothesized that formative evaluation with underrepresented populations would provide critical information on how to improve environmental health risk assessment communication efforts at hazardous waste sites.

Methods: Formative evaluation was selected to ensure that the Environmental Health Risk Assessment factsheet would be appropriately written and designed, understood, and accepted by its targeted audience before it was fully disseminated to all communities neighboring Superfund sites in Arizona. Community members living in the vicinity of two Arizona Superfund sites as well as three public health professionals/researchers were asked to evaluate the functionality and accessibility of the factsheet, particularly with regards to the graphics and whether the text was readable and presented in plain language.

Results: Participant responses revealed that in order for risk communication efforts to be effective and aid in an individual’s ability to retain new concepts, they need to interweave images, information, and analogies that are connected to the targeted audience’s past and current environmental health understandings. Based on the formative evaluation results, infographics and accompanying text were re-designed and a final factsheet was prepared. The specific design and layout decisions that aided in risk information accessibility and ensure comprehension include: 1) Form follows function, 2) graphic elements should outweigh text, 3) line of sight and layout, 4) color coding, 5) strategically grouped content, 6) use one figure per concept.

Conclusions: Through user feedback, we established a set of best practices to employ when communicating the risk assessment process as well as the potential risk posed by a hazardous waste site. The results of this formative evaluation process reiterates the significant role that visualizations play in an individual’s perception and understanding of risk. Designers and environmental and risk communicators must be transparent throughout the process of creating visualizations for public communication. It is important that the intended audience is identified and included in the process of creating the educational visualizations. Information design and visual communication best practices need to be used in conjunction with public participation efforts to achieve a cultural model of risk communication.

Implications for research and/or practice:

Studies have shown that traditional outreach efforts typically follow a one-way communication model that aims to inform, change behavior, and assure populations that the determined risk is acceptable and that cleanup is underway.

As reported in this study, participatory design and formative evaluation of risk communication materials provided a platform that supports cultural model of risk communication efforts. Future research efforts should aim to further empirically test the recommended best design practices for concise risk communication, regardless of the user’s educational background.