Abstract
Communicating individual human biomonitoring results to study participants has been the subject of debate for some time. This debate is dominated by ethical considerations from a researchers’ perspective on whether or not to communicate, thereby overlooking more practice-based questions from a participants’ perspective on what and how to communicate. We conducted a small scale follow-up study based on eleven face-to-face interviews with mothers participating in the third cycle of the Flemish Environment and Health Study (FLEHS III 2012–2015) to investigate how they experienced and interpreted individual biomonitoring results. Key findings indicate that respondents were generally satisfied with participating in the biomonitoring study, but the report-back process especially lacked contextualized information and interactive communication options to better comprehend and cope with personal results. These findings also argue in favor of a more tailored approach in which report-back methods, formats and content are diversified according to the type of results and the preferences of participants. A reflexive research practice with active engagement in follow-up research is crucial to improve participants’ understanding and use of personal biomonitoring results.
Highlights
Our study aims to provide more insight into how participants understand and interpret their biomonitoring results and to make recommendations to enhance report-back practices for large biomonitoring/surveillance studies
For our follow-up study, we focused on a cross-sectional study with 281 mothers and new-borns carried out between 2013 and 2015, within the third FLEHS-cycle
The Flemish human biomonitoring program FLEHS places a strong emphasis on comprehensive report-back of study results to participants, both on an individual and collective level
Summary
HBM is used in a variety of other settings, such as community-based biomonitoring studies, to respond to local concerns about environmental health risks, or advocacy work from civil society organizations [4,5]. Women with a high biomarker result (n = 5) expressed a feeling of concern that often overwhelmed them at first. Despite these initial feelings of concern or confusion, none of the respondents mentioned anxiety or panic, only one mother phoned the study physician for more information. Four of the mothers indicated that they did not remember this option or that they found the wording in the letter not inviting or accessible enough
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