Assignment Task: In 2015, an outbreak of Zika virus occurred in Brazil. Throughout 2016, it spread throughout the Americas, and throughout that year was considered an ongoing, active outbreak.
Infectious disease outbreaks are a particularly critical time to exercise effective and timely health communication. Communication is crucial in these contexts: it has the potential to help curb the outbreak or, if ineffective or not delivered quickly enough, may have no impact at all or, even worse, cause harm.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) writes and disseminates Public Health Notices as a tool to inform Canadians of disease outbreaks. Take a few minutes to read PHAC's Public Health Notice* (PHN) about Zika virus below;
Next, complete the following:
1. Your target audience has a reading grade level of 8. Using plain language, re-write the Zika virus public health notice so that it will be suitable for such an audience.
2. Critically reflect on the experience of re-writing the Zika virus public health notice. In doing so, consider the following. What was challenging about it? What strategies did you utilize and why? Why is it important for your target audience to understand this notice? Draw on what you've learned in class, and from the textbook, readings, or other sources, to support your reflection. Maximum 1 page single-spaced, plus references. Need Online Assistance?
3. Copy and paste the original content of the Public Health Notice into ChatGPT (free version is fine). Experiment with prompting ChatGPT to re-write the PHN content so that it is more accessible. Record your prompts and assess the output. Describe your experience and consider the following questions in 1 page or less. Did it work? What were the strengths of the output? What were the limitations? How does revised notice content that ChatGPT created compare to what you created in Question 2? Should public health be using generative AI for health communication? Discuss some of the pros and cons. Question 4 must be completed last.