This article introduces seven essential risk communication characteristics for health care professionals.

An important aspect of global disaster preparedness is defining essential characteristics of professional risk communication for medical personnel. The authors present seven essential characteristics for use by health care providers involved in risk communication:

• Risk assessment
• Differentiating between risk acceptance and trade-offs
• Understanding differences in risk quality
• Understanding how to frame information given residents’ values
• Giving attention to coping with too-high risk
• Building trust
• Fully considering how information is provided

Working together and implementing these characteristics will increase the effectiveness of risk communication during crises.