TY - JOUR
T1 - Increasing environmental health literacy through contextual learning in communities at risk
AU - Davis, Leona F.
AU - Ramirez-Andreotta, Mónica D.
AU - McLain, Jean E.T.
AU - Kilungo, Aminata
AU - Abrell, Leif
AU - Buxner, Sanlyn
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Research and Learning—Advancing Informal STEM Learning Program, grant award number 1612554.
Funding Information:
Funding: This research was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Research and Learning—Advancing Informal STEM Learning Program, grant award number 1612554.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2018/10/9
Y1 - 2018/10/9
N2 - Environmental health literacy (EHL) has recently been defined as the continuum of environmental health knowledge and awareness, skills and self-efficacy, and community action. In this study, an interdisciplinary team of university scientists, partnering with local organizations, developed and facilitated EHL trainings with special focus on rainwater harvesting and water contamination, in four communities with known environmental health stressors in Arizona, USA. These participatory trainings incorporated participants’ prior environmental health risk knowledge and personal experiences to co-create training content. Mixed methods evaluation was conducted via pre-post participant surveys in all four trainings (n = 53). Participants who did not demonstrate baseline environmental science knowledge pre-training demonstrated significant knowledge increase post-training, and participants who demonstrated low self-efficacy (SE) pre-training demonstrated a significant increase in SE post-training. Participants overall demonstrated a significant increase in specific environmental health skills described post-training. The interdisciplinary facilitator-scientist team also reported multiple benefits, including learning local knowledge that informed further research, and building trust relationships with community members for future collaboration. We propose contextual EHL education as a valuable strategy for increasing EHL in environmental health risk communities, and for building academia-community partnerships for environmental health research and action.
AB - Environmental health literacy (EHL) has recently been defined as the continuum of environmental health knowledge and awareness, skills and self-efficacy, and community action. In this study, an interdisciplinary team of university scientists, partnering with local organizations, developed and facilitated EHL trainings with special focus on rainwater harvesting and water contamination, in four communities with known environmental health stressors in Arizona, USA. These participatory trainings incorporated participants’ prior environmental health risk knowledge and personal experiences to co-create training content. Mixed methods evaluation was conducted via pre-post participant surveys in all four trainings (n = 53). Participants who did not demonstrate baseline environmental science knowledge pre-training demonstrated significant knowledge increase post-training, and participants who demonstrated low self-efficacy (SE) pre-training demonstrated a significant increase in SE post-training. Participants overall demonstrated a significant increase in specific environmental health skills described post-training. The interdisciplinary facilitator-scientist team also reported multiple benefits, including learning local knowledge that informed further research, and building trust relationships with community members for future collaboration. We propose contextual EHL education as a valuable strategy for increasing EHL in environmental health risk communities, and for building academia-community partnerships for environmental health research and action.
KW - Contextual learning
KW - Environmental health literacy
KW - Environmental health risk
KW - Environmental justice communities
KW - Hazardous waste sites
KW - Informal education
KW - Program evaluation
KW - Rainwater harvesting
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U2 - 10.3390/ijerph15102203
DO - 10.3390/ijerph15102203
M3 - Article
C2 - 30304865
AN - SCOPUS:85054774684
VL - 15
JO - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
SN - 1661-7827
IS - 10
M1 - 2203
ER -