Hannawa received her first academic appointment at Wake Forest University (WFU) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA, as tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies.[6] In 2011, she was appointed to a tenure-track professorship in health communication and research methodology at the Faculty of Communication, Università della Svizzera italiana (USI, Lugano, Switzerland), where she still works today.[7]
Hannawa conducted a grant-funded international congress entitled "Communicating Medical Error (COME)" in 2013.[8] The conference evolved into the nonprofit organization "ISCOME Global Center for the Advancement of Communication Science in Healthcare."[9] To date, Hannawa leads this research association as its founding president-elect.[10] Also in 2013, she received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) to develop evidence-based communication guidelines for disclosing medical errors to patients.[11] In 2019, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health tasked her to analyze the pandemic communication surrounding Covid-19.[12][13]
In 2016, Hannawa founded an interdisciplinary Center for the Advancement of Healthcare Quality and Safety (CAHQS) at the Università della Svizzera italiana.[14] In the same year, she was elected as a scientific expert to the ELSI Advisory Board of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN).[15] In addition, she received honorary titles as Associate Faculty at Johns Hopkins UniversityBloomberg School of Public Health (Baltimore, Maryland, USA)[16] and Cardiff University School of Medicine (Wales, United Kingdom).[7] In the same year, she was awarded the "Jozien Bensing Research Award".[17] In 2023, the government or the Swiss Canton of Uri recognized her with an appointment as Ambassador.[18] In June 2024, she founded the European Institute for Safe Communication (EISK), bringing together science and practice to protect professionals in aviation, healthcare, emergency services, energy, and crisis management from communication failures in high-risk situations.[19][20][21]
SACCIA Model
Research
Hannawa's research focuses primarily on how "safe communication" can prevent harmful errors in everyday clinical practice and ensure high-quality healthcare, particularly in the digital age.[22] In her scientific research, she has evaluated over 1000 cases of harm in hospitals.[23][24] According to her statistics, 53 patients die every day in Germany as a result of treatment errors;[25] up to 80 percent of these cases can be traced back to unsafe communication.[26][27] From this evidence, Hannawa developed a science-based "SACCIA safe communication" model that conveys five competencies that can help people build resilience against communication failures.[28] Meanwhile, she has extended her safe communication research to other high-risk contexts, such as Covid-19,[29][12][30] airborne rescues[31][32] and climate change.[33]
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