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Planning for a Pandemic and Other Major Crises
August 2006 | Volume 4 Issue 8
Effective crisis planning requires you to think about the unthinkable. What would happen to your organization if over 50 percent of employees became ill with avian influenza? What are you doing now that might help you to survive a crisis like this? This issue provides information on how to develop a careful, balanced communication plan to address this type of disaster before it hits.
Natasha Spring
Executive Editor |
Features
PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS
by Paul Matalucci
In the past few weeks, articles appeared on the inside pages of The New York Times and other news sources, with reports from Indonesia of human-to-human infection by avian flu, such as Elisabeth Rosenthal's article "Human-to-Human Infection by Bird Flu Virus Is Confirmed." Another article by Donald McNeil in the Times reported that mortality rates for avian flu are higher in young people, which was also the case in the devastating Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
AVIAN FLU
by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
Most people have already heard a little about bird flu. But people face a host of other problems, and except for public health officials and poultry farmers, few are gearing up for action about H5N1 [the virus that causes the flu]. Yet.
TEST YOUR PLAN
by Ed Moed
We are all well aware of the importance of a crisis communication plan. But many of us don't realize the necessity of conducting actual simulations to test and evaluate these plans. Whether you are on the corporate or agency side, there are countless forms of crisis that could interrupt business continuity for you and your client.
CRISIS PLANNING
by Liz Guthridge
If your crisis communication mantra is "What, Me Worry?" you are not alone. In fact, a third of IABC members who took the IABC Research Foundation crisis communication survey last December said they had no formal crisis communication plan in place prior to last year's many natural disasters and organizational crises.
Columns
by Suzanne Salvo
Corporate Modeling for Dummies
In my June 2006 article I talked about how thoughts photograph. Twenty-one years of experience has convinced me that what you are thinking at the time the shutter clicks will show up in the print.
Here are a couple of basic but effective poses that will help you look and feel more comfortable and confident in front of a camera.
by Daria Steigman
Business Development 101:
It all starts with the right approach
There's one thing no business can survive without: business. Without clients, we're just people with business cards standing in an unemployment line. So why do so many independent consultants think of prospecting as something only slightly less unpleasant than a root canal without anesthesia?
by Todd Hattori, ABC
Ethics and Accountability in the New Media Environment
In May, I had the pleasure of participating in the IABC Newfoundland & Labrador 20/20 Visionary Communications conference. Jo-Anne Polak of Hill & Knowlton, while presenting her thoughts about contemporary crisis communication, made a comment that I haven’t stopped thinking about since her presentation. Jo-Anne pointed out that after September 11th, journalists have had to become more competitive and aggressive because media sources have exploded in number, and technology has provided immediate electronic delivery.
Case Studies
Communication in the News
Related Resources
Related Resources provides additional articles and resources for understanding this month's topic of planning for a pandemic. You can also find some of these links alongside each corresponding feature article for quick reference. Links include:
- "Pandemic Planning," planning tools from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- "Preparing Businesses for a Pandemic," by Martin Byrne and Robert Dyson
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