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Contextual and psychosocial factors predicting Ebola prevention behaviours using the RANAS approach to behaviour change in Guinea-Bissau

BACKGROUND: The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa in December 2013 was the largest Ebola outbreak in history. This study aimed to measure the underlying contextual and psychosocial factors of intentions to perform Ebola prevention behaviours (not touching people who might be s...

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Autores principales: Gamma, Anna E., Slekiene, Jurgita, von Medeazza, Gregor, Asplund, Fredrik, Cardoso, Placido, Mosler, Hans-Joachim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5432987/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28506274
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4360-2
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author Gamma, Anna E.
Slekiene, Jurgita
von Medeazza, Gregor
Asplund, Fredrik
Cardoso, Placido
Mosler, Hans-Joachim
author_facet Gamma, Anna E.
Slekiene, Jurgita
von Medeazza, Gregor
Asplund, Fredrik
Cardoso, Placido
Mosler, Hans-Joachim
author_sort Gamma, Anna E.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa in December 2013 was the largest Ebola outbreak in history. This study aimed to measure the underlying contextual and psychosocial factors of intentions to perform Ebola prevention behaviours (not touching people who might be suffering from Ebola, reporting suspected cases to the National Ebola Hotline, NEH) in Guinea-Bissau. Geographical location, cross-border market activities, poor water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) conditions, and burial practices in some communities pose a serious risk in terms of potential EVD outbreak and seriously hamper its prevention in Guinea-Bissau. METHODS: In July and August 2015, quantitative data from 1369 respondents were gathered by structured face-to-face interviews. The questionnaire was based on the psychosocial factors of the RANAS (risks, attitudes, norms, abilities, and self-regulation) model. Data were analyzed by multiple linear regression analyses. RESULTS: The most important predictors for the intention to call the NEH were believing that calling the Hotline would help the infected person, perceiving that important members from the household approve of calling the Hotline, thinking that calling the Hotline is something they should do, and believing that it is important to call the Hotline to report a suspected case. For the intention not to touch someone who might be suffering from Ebola, the most important predictors were health knowledge, the perception of risk with regard to touching a person who might be suffering from Ebola, and the belief that they were able not to touch a possibly infected person. Age in years was the only significant contextual predictor for one of the two behavioural intentions, the intention to call the Hotline. It seems that younger people are more likely to use a service like the NEH than older people. CONCLUSIONS: Strengths and gaps were identified in the study population in relation to the intention to perform prevention behaviours. These call for innovative ways of aligning existing hygiene programs with relevant psychosocial factors. This research is relevant to further outbreaks of contagious diseases as it sheds light on important aspects of the impact of public health interventions during emergencies and epidemics.
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spelling pubmed-54329872017-05-17 Contextual and psychosocial factors predicting Ebola prevention behaviours using the RANAS approach to behaviour change in Guinea-Bissau Gamma, Anna E. Slekiene, Jurgita von Medeazza, Gregor Asplund, Fredrik Cardoso, Placido Mosler, Hans-Joachim BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa in December 2013 was the largest Ebola outbreak in history. This study aimed to measure the underlying contextual and psychosocial factors of intentions to perform Ebola prevention behaviours (not touching people who might be suffering from Ebola, reporting suspected cases to the National Ebola Hotline, NEH) in Guinea-Bissau. Geographical location, cross-border market activities, poor water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) conditions, and burial practices in some communities pose a serious risk in terms of potential EVD outbreak and seriously hamper its prevention in Guinea-Bissau. METHODS: In July and August 2015, quantitative data from 1369 respondents were gathered by structured face-to-face interviews. The questionnaire was based on the psychosocial factors of the RANAS (risks, attitudes, norms, abilities, and self-regulation) model. Data were analyzed by multiple linear regression analyses. RESULTS: The most important predictors for the intention to call the NEH were believing that calling the Hotline would help the infected person, perceiving that important members from the household approve of calling the Hotline, thinking that calling the Hotline is something they should do, and believing that it is important to call the Hotline to report a suspected case. For the intention not to touch someone who might be suffering from Ebola, the most important predictors were health knowledge, the perception of risk with regard to touching a person who might be suffering from Ebola, and the belief that they were able not to touch a possibly infected person. Age in years was the only significant contextual predictor for one of the two behavioural intentions, the intention to call the Hotline. It seems that younger people are more likely to use a service like the NEH than older people. CONCLUSIONS: Strengths and gaps were identified in the study population in relation to the intention to perform prevention behaviours. These call for innovative ways of aligning existing hygiene programs with relevant psychosocial factors. This research is relevant to further outbreaks of contagious diseases as it sheds light on important aspects of the impact of public health interventions during emergencies and epidemics. BioMed Central 2017-05-15 /pmc/articles/PMC5432987/ /pubmed/28506274 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4360-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Gamma, Anna E.
Slekiene, Jurgita
von Medeazza, Gregor
Asplund, Fredrik
Cardoso, Placido
Mosler, Hans-Joachim
Contextual and psychosocial factors predicting Ebola prevention behaviours using the RANAS approach to behaviour change in Guinea-Bissau
title Contextual and psychosocial factors predicting Ebola prevention behaviours using the RANAS approach to behaviour change in Guinea-Bissau
title_full Contextual and psychosocial factors predicting Ebola prevention behaviours using the RANAS approach to behaviour change in Guinea-Bissau
title_fullStr Contextual and psychosocial factors predicting Ebola prevention behaviours using the RANAS approach to behaviour change in Guinea-Bissau
title_full_unstemmed Contextual and psychosocial factors predicting Ebola prevention behaviours using the RANAS approach to behaviour change in Guinea-Bissau
title_short Contextual and psychosocial factors predicting Ebola prevention behaviours using the RANAS approach to behaviour change in Guinea-Bissau
title_sort contextual and psychosocial factors predicting ebola prevention behaviours using the ranas approach to behaviour change in guinea-bissau
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5432987/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28506274
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4360-2
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