How Language Shapes Change: Perspectives on the Most and Least Effective Communication Strategies and Tactics During the COVID‑19 Pandemic ​

This perspectives brief presents some of the limited available evidence—from published literature and experts’ perspectives—on the most and least effective communications strategies and tactics used by public health and government to prevent and control community (i.e. non-hospital) infection during the COVID‑19 pandemic, including uptake of testing, tracing, vaccination, masking, and air quality mitigation. We summarize lessons learned about how to improve communications, drawing from both the published literature and from key informant interviews with communications scholars and/or practitioners in Canada and other jurisdictions.