Principles and practices of communication processes for genetics in public health

Abstract
This chapter describes two basic requirements of the communication processes and outcomes necessary to an ethical and socially responsible use of genetic medicine in a public health framework. It begins by reviewing the reasons that there are exceptional ethical burdens on genetic medicine and then outlines the transactional model of communication and its applications in public health genetics. It concludes by describing research on the effects-based pretesting of the attitudinal effects of public health messages about genetics.