Key Takeaways
Boil water notifications (BWNs) issued during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri were typically followed, especially in households with children present and those with higher income.
Cascading failure of interconnected systems (such as power and drinking water) inhibited some individuals from being able to follow boil water guidance.
Of the people who boiled their water following BWNs, more than 92% reported boiling it for 2 minutes or more.
Safe, clean water is necessary for health and well-being. Water issues affect minority and vulnerable populations at disproportionate rates, including the poor and racial and ethnic Ashleigh M. Day is a PhD candidate, Thomas C. Rumble Fellow, and graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Ashleigh's research interests center around crisis, risk, organizational and health communication. Sydney O'Shay-Wallace is a PhD candidate and graduate research assistant in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University, as well as a fellow with the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child and Family Development. She is a health and risk communication scholar whose work is centered around stigma communication in healthcare contexts. Her research focuses on how stigma is constructed in communication between healthcare workers and patients as well as among healthcare workers. Matthew W. Seeger (PhD, Indiana University) has been a faculty member and administrator at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan for over 30 years. He currently serves as dean for the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts. Dean Seeger's research interests concern crisis and risk communication, health promotion and communication, crisis response and agency coordination, the role of media, including new media, in crisis, crisis and communication ethics, failure of complex systems and post-crisis renewal. He has worked closely with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on communication and the anthrax attack and on communication and pandemic influenza preparedness. Work with the CDC also includes assistance in developing the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) framework. He has also worked with the World Health Organization on developing risk communication guidance. Dr.
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