Scientists and journalists networked to promote environmental health

Author: Bernard Appiah – Department of Public Health, Falk College, Syracuse University, Ghana

Co-authors:
David Anum – Centre for Science and Health Communication, Ghana
George Appiah – Centre for Science and Health Communication, Ghana
Edward Mulogo – Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda
Esther Nakkazi – Health Journalists Network Uganda
Samuel Odai – Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
Anubhuti Poudyal – Texas A&M School of Public Health, USA

Workshops involving scientists and media professionals are increasingly being organised to promote public engagement with science. However, there is limited research on approaches to establishing and evaluating networks among scientists and journalists to promote public engagement with environmental health.

The Scientists and Journalists Networked to Promote Environment Health is a pilot project that was implemented in Ghana and Uganda to build the capacity of journalists and scientists to engage with each other. In addition, this project used social network analysis as an innovative approach for analyzing the networks, and assessed the feasibility of using online discussions for public engagement with environmental health.

In each country, journalists with interest in reporting environmental health attended a two-day workshop with scientists undertaking environmental health research. A social network questionnaire was administered to participants during, and several months after, the workshop, to assess engagements with environmental health among the scientists and the journalists.

This show and tell will highlight how the networks were formed and the findings from the social network analysis. We will also show the findings of a feasibility study among the scientists and journalists for using online discussion forum to engage with each other to help sustain the networks. There were increased public engagements among the participants after the workshop, with most favouring using weekly online discussions to promote engagement with environmental health issues.

Scientists-journalists networks on environmental health and the use of social network analysis as an approach for evaluations should be encouraged for advancing public communication of science and technology, and knowledge translation.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Show, tell and talk
Theme: Science
Area of interest: Investigating science communication practices