From Content Knowledge to Community Change: A Review of Representations of Environmental Health Literacy

Environmental health literacy (EHL) is a relatively new framework for conceptualizing how people understand and use information about potentially harmful environmental exposures and their influence on health. As such, information on the characterization and measurement of EHL is limited. This review provides an overview of EHL as presented in peer-reviewed literature and aggregates studies based on whether they represent individual level EHL or community level EHL or both. A range of assessment tools has been used to measure EHL, with many studies relying on pre-/post-assessment; however, a broader suite of assessment tools may be needed to capture community-wide outcomes. This review also suggests that the definition of EHL should explicitly include community change or collective action as an important longer-term outcome and proposes a refinement of previous representations of EHL as a theoretical framework, to include self-efficacy.