Abstract
Recent decades have shown an international trend of decline in small-scale fishing; a longstanding and vital industry for numerous coastal populations. The decline has resulted in a loss of livelihoods in many coastal communities, potentially afflicting public health. Still, knowledge about the health situation of these areas is limited. Former studies on coastal health have primarily defined coastal areas based solely on their proximity to the coast, therefore not targeting the traditional coastal communities with longstanding coastal involvement through small-scale fishing. In this paper, we aim to illuminate the health situation in these areas by introducing a more fine-grained classification of the coastal study population; considering both geographical proximity to the coast, population density and employment in fishing. Using data from the Norwegian population-based HUNT Study, we perform individual and simultaneous adjustments for employment, behavioural and psychosocial factors to assess the contributions of these factors to the association between geographical affiliation and self-rated general health. The rural coastal areas with a history of small-scale fishing show a poorer health situation compared to urban coastal, rural inland and rural fjord populations, and behavioural factors contribute the most to the observed health disparities. Our findings encourage greater focus on societal differences between coastal communities when studying coastal health.
Highlights
Population statistics of England, Wales and Norway reveal pop ulations of coastal areas to be more likely to report poor health compared to inland populations (ONS, 2014; Aase, 1996)
Our findings indicate that none of the contribution of employ ment factors was through psychosocial factors for the rural coastal population, but partly for the rural fjord population (5 percentage points) (Fig. 2)
By introducing a more fine-grained classification of coastal areas, we found a statistically significant higher likelihood of poor self-rated health in both rural coastal and rural fjord areas compared to urban coastal areas
Summary
Population statistics of England, Wales and Norway reveal pop ulations of coastal areas to be more likely to report poor health compared to inland populations (ONS, 2014; Aase, 1996). Recent decades have shown an international trend of considerable decline in small-scale fishing, a long-standing and wide spread coastal industry tightly entangled with both social and economic relations of coastal communities (Johnson et al, 2018; Urquhart et al., 2011). This decline is apparent in Norway, a sea nation where many coastal communities, often rural, have faced major drops in fish stocks from the mid twentieth century, some places combined with booming new industries of oil and fish farming (Onsager et al, 2015; Christensen and Zachariassen, 2014). Considering the well-established association between area characteristics and several health outcomes, and the intertwinement of public health and economic and social changes operating over decades (Pickett and Pearl, 2001; Men et al, 2003; Hanlon and McCartney, 2008), the downturn in small-scale fishing might compromise the health of coastal populations
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