News
PARC webinar series on risk communication launched
PARC has successfully launched its webinar series on risk communication, aiming to address the importance of effectively communicating health risks of chemicals to diverse stakeholders and building capacities within the PARC community and beyond.
The first webinar, “Principles for Effective Risk Communication", took place on 28 November 2024, attracting more than 170 participants . The session was led by Ana Rita Goes, an expert in health promotion and health communication from the National School of Public Health ↗, NOVA Lisbon University. She introduced participants to core concepts, principles, and systematic approaches in risk communication, along with practical tools and tips for building trust, addressing uncertainty, and crafting clear, credible, and actionable messages tailored to specific audiences.
This webinar highlighted several key takeaways:
- Transparent, timely, and relevant communication is essential to building trust.
- Effective risk communication requires clear messages, tailored to audience needs and supported by credible information.
- Systematic approaches, such as understanding goals, identifying audiences, and evaluating message dissemination, are critical to success.
“Risk communication is more than conveying facts and changing people risk perceptions. It’s about engaging people and fostering trust. But it’s also about enhancing individuals’ motivation and conditions to respond effectively to risks. We must remember that risk is communicated with facts and numbers, but is perceived and enacted through a lens of individuals’ experiences, motivations, capacities and opportunities. Therefore, we need to consider not only the most up-to-date information, but also how we should pack the information to make it relevant and actionable.” – highlighted by Ana Rita Goes.
The presentation of the first webinar can be accessed here.
The PARC webinar series will continue with new webinars, each focusing on key aspects of risk communication. Stakeholders are encouraged to check the PARC website for updates and further details.
| Topic | Provisional title | When |
|---|---|---|
| Risk communication in practice | Results of the survey on risk communication in Greece and Slovenia | March 2025 |
| Community engagement | Engaging communities and stakeholders effectively for risk communication | June 2025 |
| Risk communication management | Risk communication management in occupational health (based on HBM data) | October 2025 |
| Risk perception / communication messages | The psychology of risk perception: Insights for designing effective risk communication messages | June 2026 |
| Behaviour change | From risk awareness to behaviour change | October 2026 |
| Audiences – Health Literacy | The role of health literacy in risk communication | November 2026 |
Stay tuned for further updates and join us in fostering better communication strategies for chemical risk assessment.