Abstract
Occupational safety and health professionals worked with health communication experts to collaborate with a major Spanish language television network to develop and implement a construction workplace safety media intervention targeting Latino/Hispanic audiences. An Entertainment–Education (EE) health communication strategy was used to create a worksite safety storyline weaved into the main plot of a nationally televised Telenovela (Spanish language soap opera). A secondary analysis of audience survey data in a pre/posttest cross-sectional equivalent group design was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of this EE media intervention to change knowledge, attitudes, and intention outcomes related to the prevention of fatal falls at construction worksites. Results indicate that using culturally relevant mediums can be an effective way of reaching and educating audiences about specific fall prevention information. This is aligned with recommendations by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to increase interventions and evaluations of culturally relevant and competent health communication.
Highlights
Despite the economic downturn, more than 2.5 million native and foreign-born Latinos continued to work in construction trades in 2010 (Motel, 2012), representing approximately 20% of the total construction workforce, and an increase of nearly 150% since 1990
These findings demonstrate that an EE-based telenovela incorporating a storyline embedded with specific knowledge messages can enhance fall prevention safety education to general audiences, and highlights the relevance of how audience members react differently dependent on their own real life personal relationships with a specific public health issue
Our work shows the value of using telenovelas as popular vehicles for outreach in Latin America, corroborating media scholars who believe in their power to help societies create meaning
Summary
More than 2.5 million native and foreign-born Latinos continued to work in construction trades in 2010 (Motel, 2012), representing approximately 20% of the total construction workforce, and an increase of nearly 150% since 1990. Past workplace safety interventions have often focused on workplace regulation and policy interventions requiring employers to eliminate hazards (Emmons, 2000) While these laws have been effective in lowering rates of injury in certain workplace sectors (Emmons, 2000), language and literacy barriers, difficulty of disseminating basic safety information, and workplace safety beliefs held by workers are barriers to effective workplace safety prevention in an industry like construction (Brunette, 2004, 2005; de Castro, Fujishiro, Sweitzer, & Oliva, 2006; Dong, Entzel, Men, Chowdhury, & Schneider, 2004; Goodrum & Jiukun, 2005). SAGE Open workers had increased knowledge of workplace safety risks, and emerged with a better understanding of their specific rights to a safe workplace (Pellow & Sun-Hee Park, 2003)
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