Challenges and facilitators of public engagement with water, sanitation, hygiene and other environmental health issues in Ghana and Uganda: perspectives of scientists, journalists and the public

Abstract

Despite many water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH) and other environmental health challenges in sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about interactions involving scientists, journalists and the public to aid public understanding of the relationship between WASH and health. Using purposive sampling, we conducted key informant interviews and focus group discussions with scientists, journalists and members of the public in Ghana and Uganda to identify issues associated with the promotion of public engagement with WASH and other environmental health issues. An inductive thematic analysis was used to explore the evidence, challenges and opportunities of public engagement. The effectiveness of public engagement was constrained by poor interactions between scientists and journalists and limited understanding among the public on WASH and other environmental health issues. Challenges identified included inadequate scientists–journalists collaborations, scientists' lack of time, pressure from media organizations and concerns about journalists' inadequate capacity to communicate environmental issues due to lack of training. Possible solutions included increased interactions, science communication training and using public information officers as knowledge brokers between scientists and journalists to boost public engagement with WASH and other environmental health issues. Our study contributes to the literature on the need to actively engage the public with WASH and other environmental health concerns.

Community engagement in water, sanitation and hygiene in sub-Saharan Africa: does it WASH?

“…Education plays a critical role, as knowledge sharing involving community members is the key to addressing WASH and related challenges (Kema et al 2012;Hetherington et al 2017;Adams & Boateng 2018;Silvestri et al 2018;Aduro & Ebenso 2019;Appiah et al 2020;Hovden et al 2020). However, infrastructures that enable people to act upon these challenges are crucial to managing, sustaining and upscaling new practices (Kariuki et al 2012;Banana et al 2015;Intriago Zambrano et al 2020).…”

“…A range of tools and methods, which have been shown to raise greater awareness of sanitation and hygiene issues, are being proposed in the literature, including media, planning workshops, training sessions and house-to-house visits by village authorities and health officials, and co-created learning processes with engaged stakeholders (Kariuki et al 2012;Kema et al 2012;Bisung et al 2015;Hetherington et al 2017;Silvestri et al 2018). The key in all these approaches is, on one hand, the simplification of the scientific language used and, on the other hand, using human-centred storytelling approaches that can increase public engagement on environmental health and WASH issues (Appiah et al 2020). Also, integrating tools such as 'photo voice', community theatre, can enable the expression of issues difficult to express with words (Silvestri et al 2018).…”

“…Full commitment to a bottom-up community-based, participatory approach, especially one that promotes community ownership, has shown benefits. Communities are more likely to participate in a project that they themselves have helped to initiate and develop (Kema et al 2012;Bisung et al 2015;Appiah et al 2020;Crosby et al 2020;Shields et al 2021). For instance, community engagement in Kenya enhanced trust between the researchers and the community, as well as a sense of ownership over the research process, outcomes and collective actions (Bisung et al 2015), shared ownership and improved outcomes in Sierra Leone (Crosby et al 2020).…”

Marine ecosystem science and the media: Exploring ways to improve news coverage through journalist–scientist working relations

“…As journalists rely on scientists for information about marine issues, effective communication between the two appears essential. Journalists and scientists have been surveyed within the context of science news (Johnson, 1963; Ryan, 1979; Peters, 1995; Reed, 2001; Hartz & Chappell, 2005; Ashwell, 2016) and the reporting of special topics such as biotechnology (Gunter, Kinderlerer & Beyleveld, 1999), biomedicine (Dijkstra, Roefs & Drossaert, 2015), sanitation (Appiah et al, 2020) and mercury pollution (Maillé, Saint‐Charles & Lucotte, 2010). However, the journalist–scientist relationship within the context of marine news reporting has hardly received any research attention.…”

Science journalism in pandemic times: perspectives on the science-media relationship from COVID-19 researchers in Southern Europe

“…A large body of literature has explored the nature and quality of the interactions between journalists and scientists working in different research fields and countries (for an overview of the topic see, e.g., Dudo, 2015;Yeo and Brossard, 2017). With a few exceptions (Kaye et al, 2011;Lo and Peters, 2015;Appiah et al, 2020;Koso, 2021), research on the science-media relationship has largely focused on the USA and other English-speaking countries, as well as on Northern and Western Europe (e.g., Peters, 2007Peters, , 2013Peters et al, 2008a;Dijkstra et al, 2015). In consequence, regions such as Southern European countries have been less studied when it comes to understanding the science-media relationship.…”