Citizen Science Approach to Home Radon Testing, Environmental Health Literacy and Efficacy.

Exposure to radon is a leading cause of lung cancer worldwide. However, few test their homes for radon. There is a need to increase access to radon testing and decrease radon exposure.

Knowledge and Beliefs Associated with Environmental Health Literacy: A Case Study Focused on Toxic Metals Contamination of Well Water.

Environmental health literacy (EHL) is developing as a framework that can inform educational interventions designed to facilitate individual and collective action to protect health, yet EHL measurement poses several challenges. While some studies have measured environmental health knowledge resulting from interventions, few have incorporated skills and self-efficacy. In this study, a process-focused EHL instrument was developed, using the Newest Vital Sign (NVS) health literacy instrument as a model and tailoring it for the context of private well contamination with toxic metals.

Classifying Community Organizational Health Communication Networks: Local Health Department Recognition of Public Information-Sharing Partners Across Sectors.

Objective: Local health departments (LHDs) operate within complex, multisectoral organizational communication networks. Network composition may affect priorities, processes, and the reach of health information to key stakeholders. This study seeks to elucidate variation in local network structures to examine how different constellations may affect information sharing across audiences.

Sensemaking, stakeholder discord, and long-term risk communication at a US Superfund site.

Introduction: Risk communication can help reduce exposures to environmental contaminants, mitigate negative health outcomes, and inform community-based decisions about hazardous waste sites. While communication best practices have long guided such efforts, little research has examined unintended consequences arising from such guidelines. As rhetoric informs stakeholder sensemaking, the language used in and reinforced by these guidelines can challenge relationships and exacerbate stakeholder tensions.

Organizational Variation in Implementation of an Evidence-Based Human Papillomavirus Intervention.

Introduction: "1-2-3 Pap" is a video-based intervention designed to improve human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine adherence rates among young women in rural Eastern Kentucky. The efficacy trial for the original intervention linked video exposure with increased likelihood of vaccine series completion among the target audience. Given their historic focus on prevention, local health departments were selected as pilot sites to study implementation of 1-2-3 Pap in a public health setting and identify site-specific variations in its implementation.