[Federal Register Volume 67, Number 119 (Thursday, June 20, 2002)]
[Notices]
[Pages 42004-42005]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 02-15549]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

[30DAY-38-02]


Agency Forms Undergoing Paperwork Reduction Act Review

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes a 
list of information collection requests under review by the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB) in compliance with the Paperwork Reduction 
Act (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35). To request a copy of these requests, call 
the CDC Reports Clearance Officer at (404) 498-1210. Send written 
comments to CDC, Desk Officer, Human Resources and Housing Branch, New 
Executive Office Building, Room 10235, Washington, DC 20503. Written 
comments should be received within 30 days of this notice.
    Proposed Project: CDC/ATSDR Health Message Development and Testing 
System--New--Office of the Director, Office of Communication (OD/OC), 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) protects people's health and 
safety by preventing and controlling diseases and injuries; promotes 
healthy living through strong partnerships with local, national and 
international organizations, and enhances health decisions by providing 
credible information on critical health issues.
    Members of the public and health practitioners at all levels 
require up-to-date, credible information about health and safety in 
order to make rational decisions. To help support this crucial decision 
making, CDC has continued to increase and apply its preeminent 
expertise in the disciplines of public health surveillance, 
epidemiology, statistical analysis, laboratory investigation and 
analysis, behavioral risk reduction, technology transfer, prevention 
research, social marketing, and health communication. CDC applies the 
science that underpins those disciplines to develop and disseminate 
credible and practical health information to meet the diverse needs of 
its primary clients, the people of the United States. Such information 
affects the health and well-being of people across all stages of life 
by making our food supply safe, identifying harmful behaviors, and 
improving our environment.
    CDC, and it's sister agency, the Agency for Toxic Substances and 
Disease Registry (ATSDR), in order to fulfill their mission and 
mandates, must frequently communicate urgent and sensitive health 
messages with the general public, members of the public with certain 
diseases or disabling conditions, and those at a greater risk of 
exposure to disease or injury causing agents. CDC/ATSDR makes this 
crucial health information available through many channels including 
books, periodicals, and monographs; internet Web sites; health and 
safety guidelines; reports from investigations and emergency responses; 
public health monitoring and statistics; travel advisories; answers to 
public inquiries; and health education campaigns.
    In addition to serving the public, CDC/ATSDR delivers health 
information that enables health providers to make critical decisions. 
For instance, the practicing medical and dental communities and the 
nation's health care providers are target audiences for numerous 
official CDC recommendations concerning the diagnosis and treatment of 
disease, immunization schedules, infection control, and clinical 
prevention practices. CDC/ATSDR offers technical assistance and 
training to health professionals as well.
    In order to ensure that the public and other key audiences, like 
health care providers, understand the information, are motivated to 
take action, and are not offended or react negatively to the messages, 
it is critical to test messages and materials prior to their production 
and release. Currently, each CDC program developing health messages is 
required to submit its message development and testing activities for 
individual OMB review. Many CDC programs have extremely short deadlines 
for developing and producing health messages. Some deadlines are 
imposed by Congress, and others are necessitated by the time-sensitive 
nature of the work. Many programs cannot accommodate the time required 
for OMB approval and, therefore, skip the message testing step all 
together, or resort to testing specific portions of messages with nine 
or fewer individuals. The science of health communication does not 
support these programmatic practices. In fact, these undesirable 
alternatives weaken CDC/ATSDR position as a research-based public 
health agency providing credible health information that people can 
count on and use.

[[Page 42005]]

    CDC may achieve a greater level of efficacy if it can use three 
routine health message development and testing methods: (1) Central 
Location Intercept Interviews (i.e. ``Shopping mall'' interviews); (2) 
Customer Satisfaction Phone Interviews; and (3) Web-enabled research. 
Virtually every Center, Institute and Office (CIO) at CDC could achieve 
a higher level of confidence that health messages were understandable 
and would provoke no unintended consequences if they were empowered to 
use these methods efficiently. The CDC Office of Communication 
therefore requests approval for implementation of a Health Message 
Development and Testing System that will conduct approximately 64 
message testing activities per year for each of three years. A message 
testing activity is defined as a one-time use of a method to provide 
direction for a specific health communication program.
    For example, if the diabetes program wanted to test messages with 
Central Location Intercept Interview and Customer Satisfaction Phone 
Interviews, these activities would be counted as two separate testing 
activities. If all 64 testing activities were implemented, total 
respondent burden per year is estimated at 3,200 hours.
    While the methods of message development and testing are standard, 
the instruments and outcomes are unique to the health topic and 
audience the health message is being developed on and for. This health 
message development and testing system will allow a timely mechanism 
for developing and testing health messages on a wide variety of public 
health topics to ensure that the appropriate message is delivered and 
received by the American public. This request presents methodology, 
background information, justification for the process, and sample 
questionnaires and questions. The estimated annual burden for this data 
collection is 3,167 hours.

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                                                     Number of       Number of       Number of    Average burden
                 Data collection                  activities per    respondents    responses per   per response
                                                       year        per activity     respondent      (in hours)
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Intercept, touch-screen, & internet interviews..              60             100               1           30/60
Web-enabled panel survey........................               1            1000               1           10/60
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    Dated: June 14, 2002.
Nancy E. Cheal,
Acting Associate Director for Policy, Planning and Evaluation, Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention.
[FR Doc. 02-15549 Filed 6-19-02; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4163-18-P