Improving health messaging in fight to slow COVID-19

For the past year, we’ve heard about the importance of wearing masks, avoiding crowds, maintaining physical distance and regularly washing our hands. All of us have been asked to take simple steps to protect ourselves and those around us. But nothing is simple when you have to do it every day for months, particularly while receiving mixed messages from some friends and leaders. In this episode, we’ll hear about how focused marketing and health communication could help more people do the right thing and make better decisions to keep themselves and their loved ones safe. We speak to Mary C. Politi, PhD, a health psychologist and a professor in the Division of Public Health Sciences in the Department of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; and to Robyn LeBoeuf, PhD, a professor of marketing at the university’s Olin Business School. They discuss how our biases, judgments and health behaviors might be shaped, even changed, by targeted, consistent messages from health-care providers and government leaders.

The podcast, “Show Me the Science,” is produced by the Office of Medical Public Affairs at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.