How Does WHO’s COVID-19 Response Build and Challenge the Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) Evidence-Base?

This analysis reviews articles appearing in the special issue of Health Communication, “WHO Risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) lessons learned from COVID-19” through a lens of previous RCCE research and their implications for future practice. The successes and challenges presented by the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters, regions, and partners are compared to recommendations and conclusions of the most recent WHO RCCE guideline, Communicating risk during public health emergencies: A WHO guideline for emergency risk communication (ERC) policy and practice. The Guideline includes the only official WHO evidence-based recommendations for RCCE practice, based on meta-syntheses of relevant literature through 2015. This analysis considered whether RCCE interventions undertaken during COVID-19 added strength to previous recommendations, filled evidence gaps, contradicted or added nuance to endorsements and conclusions, or pointed RCCE in new directions for future practice.