Improving Environmental Health Literacy and Justice through Environmental Exposure Results Communication

Abstract

Understanding the short- and long-term impacts of a biomonitoring and exposure project and reporting personal results back to study participants is critical for guiding future efforts, especially in the context of environmental justice. The purpose of this study was to evaluate learning outcomes from environmental communication efforts and whether environmental health literacy goals were met in an environmental justice community. We conducted 14 interviews with parents who had participated in the University of Arizona’s Metals Exposure Study in Homes and analyzed their responses using NVivo, a qualitative data management and analysis program. Key findings were that participants used the data to cope with their challenging circumstances, the majority of participants described changing their families’ household behaviors, and participants reported specific interventions to reduce family exposures. The strength of this study is that it provides insight into what people learn and gain from such results communication efforts, what participants want to know, and what type of additional information participants need to advance their environmental health literacy. This information can help improve future report back efforts and advance environmental health and justice.

Do Online Comments Affect Environmental Management? Identifying Factors Related to Environmental Management and Sustainability of Hotels

“…As discussed in Section 2, e-WOM is "personal communication supported by the Internet and can be disseminated by a multitude of online applications such as online forums, electronic billboard systems, blogs, review sites, and social networks " [22,45,46]. According to several authors, including Papathanassis and Knolle [4] and Saura, et al [3], online recommendations are particularly important for the tourism sector and need to be taken in account by those responsible for managing the hotels [47][48][49].…”

“…Textual Analysis was performed on these three groups of reviews using the qualitative analysis software Nvivo Pro 12 (QSR International, Melbourne, Australia) [46]. Then, the databases were subdivided into nodes (N) corresponding to review types N 1 (positive), N 2 (neutral), and N 3 (negative).…”

“…To calculate the weighted percentage, we used Nvivo Pro 12 with the following formula [46] (see Equation (1)): K = ∑ ki/n; i = {1, . .…”

“…These indicators are grouped into categories that form a node, and these nodes are linked to the feeling indicated by the positive, negative or neutral reviews database, from which we rely on for textual analysis. Hence, we can finally group all indicators identified according to sentiment and based on the results of the application of Nvivo Pro 12 with the indicated formula and the weight of the category of the node that makes up the indicators [3, 27,46] …”

Environmental Justice Research: Contemporary Issues and Emerging Topics

“…Promoting and achieving EJ : While EJ scholars often focus on describing the injustices experienced by socially disadvantaged communities, several articles in this Special Issue direct attention toward efforts to achieve EJ through implementation of interventions to improve environmental knowledge and health [14,17], identification of avenues for sustainable and just community and societal change [1,8,9,13], and incorporation of EJ metrics in government programs [12]. In the area of interventions, Ramirez-Andreotta et al [17] examine parental perceptions of the “report back” process after an exposure assessment.…”