Communication and Community Involvement to Support Risk Governance.

Liliana Cori,Angela Cuttitta,Girolama Biondo,Fabrizio Bianchi,Silvia Ruggieri,Anna Lisa Alessi,Francesca Gorini,Mario Sprovieri

doi:10.3390/ijerph16224356

Abstract

In past years, communication activities have become increasingly important in the environment and health domain, considering the concurrent developments of social media and scientific citizenship that contributed changes in legislation and culture. Communication is particularly crucial where an environmental hazard is present, as in the case of high risk environmental and health risk areas. The project “International Center of Advanced Study in Environment, Ecosystem and Human Health” (CISAS), carried out by the Italian National Research Council, covers multiple research activities, from ecology to biology and medical sciences, from epidemiology to social sciences and communication. Three different studies based on human biomonitoring and a birth cohort study are currently in progress in the project locations, together with studies on the environmental fate of pollutants. A clear, accurate and respectful communication of study protocols and results represents a priority to produce comprehensible information available for policy makers, citizens, and stakeholders. This paper describes the multiple external and internal communication activities planned in the framework of the CISAS project as an example of promotion of knowledge in the society at large and improvement of risk management in the environmental health domain.

Highlights

The attention of the scientific community towards communication activities grew in recent years: the availability of research data and results is considered a key feature, managed through open access publications, to improve the dialogue with the group of peers; the publication of research protocols is a mandatory component of research, especially when issues of general interest are at stake.transparent results can be crucial to enhance the results significance, if they are shared with the stakeholders and transformed into policy recommendations [1,2].Considering the concurrent developments of social media and scientific citizenship that contributed to changes in legislation and culture, the role of each stakeholder in the communication arena can be questioned, it is effectively questioned, and is barely predictable [3]
The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the communication issues involved in a multidisciplinary project dealing with environment and health in high risk areas, to inform the scientific community and the stakeholders about means and project activities that are in progress, first results and expected outcomes
The Human Biomonitoring (HBM) forms, factsheets and questionnaires were used for three HBM studies and the cohort study of newborns implemented in the project areas

Summary

Introduction

Considering the concurrent developments of social media and scientific citizenship that contributed to changes in legislation and culture, the role of each stakeholder in the communication arena can be questioned, it is effectively questioned, and is barely predictable [3]. In the environment and health domain which is covered in the present article, citizens increasingly demand more and more information to contribute to their individual and collective protection and prevention Public Health 2019, 16, 4356; doi:10.3390/ijerph16224356 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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