Communicating advanced information about the risks of rabies to residents of Pook Amorsolo

This thesis discusses how risk messages about rabies are critical for the residents of Pook Amorsolo given that many households in the community own dogs. As an organization that provides animal health services and advocates for responsible pet ownership, UP Veterinary Teaching Hospital-Diliman (UPVTH) therefore aims to communicate advanced information (i.e. types, transmission, symptoms, prevention, and treatment) to the residents of Pook Amorsolo. This is in consideration to one of the organization\u27s advocacies regarding responsible pet ownership, which is to inform pet owners about the risks of rabies and to help people understand preventive measures. The organizational communication problem is that residents of Pook Amorsolo have low information sufficiency because risk information about rabies is ineffectively disseminated to them, such that these risks are not emphasized in the messages that UPVTH disseminates. Guided by risk information seeking processing (RISP) model, theory of planned behavior (TPB) and This is Public Health : Health Communications Campaign, this thesis aims to inform the residents of Pook Amorsolo about the risks of rabies and the preventive measures they can do to avoid these risks, most especially, anti-rabies vaccination uptake. Using mixed methods, the results showed that the intervention was partly effective in terms of increasing information sufficiently and intervention to vaccinate among the residents of Pook Amorsolo but was unable to elicit vaccination behavior. Furthermore, the results of the thesis showed that there is a lack of available opportunities for the residents to vaccinate their dogs. Another point of discussion is the decreased number of dog bites in Pook Amorsolo despite no vaccine uptake