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Assessing the Geographic Context of Risk Perception and Behavioral Response to Potential Ebola Exposure
The 2014–2016 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic outbreak reached over 28,000 cases and totaled over 11,000 deaths with 4 confirmed cases in the United States, which sparked widespread public concern about nationwide spread of EVD. Concern was elevated in locations connected to the infected people,...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6427407/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30866474 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16050831 |
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author | Shook, Eric Curtis, Andrew Curtis, Jacqueline Gibson, Gregory Vander Horst, Anthony Little, Virginia Woolverton, Christopher |
author_facet | Shook, Eric Curtis, Andrew Curtis, Jacqueline Gibson, Gregory Vander Horst, Anthony Little, Virginia Woolverton, Christopher |
author_sort | Shook, Eric |
collection | PubMed |
description | The 2014–2016 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic outbreak reached over 28,000 cases and totaled over 11,000 deaths with 4 confirmed cases in the United States, which sparked widespread public concern about nationwide spread of EVD. Concern was elevated in locations connected to the infected people, which included Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. This threat of exposure enabled a unique opportunity to assess self-reported knowledge about EVD, risk perception, and behavior response to EVD. Unlike existing studies, which often survey one point in time across geographically coarse scales, this work offers insights into the geographic context of risk perception and behavior at finer-grained spatial and temporal scales. We report results from 3138 respondents comprised of faculty, staff, and students at two time periods. Results reveal increased EVD knowledge, decreased risk perception, and reduction in protective actions during this time. Faculty had the lowest perceived risk, followed by staff and then students, suggesting the role of education in this outcome. However, the most impactful result is the proof-of-concept for this study design to be deployed in the midst of a disease outbreak. Such geographically targeted and temporally dynamic surveys distributed during an outbreak can show where and when risk perception and behaviors change, which can provide policy-makers with rapid results that can shape intervention practices. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6427407 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-64274072019-04-10 Assessing the Geographic Context of Risk Perception and Behavioral Response to Potential Ebola Exposure Shook, Eric Curtis, Andrew Curtis, Jacqueline Gibson, Gregory Vander Horst, Anthony Little, Virginia Woolverton, Christopher Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The 2014–2016 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic outbreak reached over 28,000 cases and totaled over 11,000 deaths with 4 confirmed cases in the United States, which sparked widespread public concern about nationwide spread of EVD. Concern was elevated in locations connected to the infected people, which included Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. This threat of exposure enabled a unique opportunity to assess self-reported knowledge about EVD, risk perception, and behavior response to EVD. Unlike existing studies, which often survey one point in time across geographically coarse scales, this work offers insights into the geographic context of risk perception and behavior at finer-grained spatial and temporal scales. We report results from 3138 respondents comprised of faculty, staff, and students at two time periods. Results reveal increased EVD knowledge, decreased risk perception, and reduction in protective actions during this time. Faculty had the lowest perceived risk, followed by staff and then students, suggesting the role of education in this outcome. However, the most impactful result is the proof-of-concept for this study design to be deployed in the midst of a disease outbreak. Such geographically targeted and temporally dynamic surveys distributed during an outbreak can show where and when risk perception and behaviors change, which can provide policy-makers with rapid results that can shape intervention practices. MDPI 2019-03-07 2019-03 /pmc/articles/PMC6427407/ /pubmed/30866474 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16050831 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Shook, Eric Curtis, Andrew Curtis, Jacqueline Gibson, Gregory Vander Horst, Anthony Little, Virginia Woolverton, Christopher Assessing the Geographic Context of Risk Perception and Behavioral Response to Potential Ebola Exposure |
title | Assessing the Geographic Context of Risk Perception and Behavioral Response to Potential Ebola Exposure |
title_full | Assessing the Geographic Context of Risk Perception and Behavioral Response to Potential Ebola Exposure |
title_fullStr | Assessing the Geographic Context of Risk Perception and Behavioral Response to Potential Ebola Exposure |
title_full_unstemmed | Assessing the Geographic Context of Risk Perception and Behavioral Response to Potential Ebola Exposure |
title_short | Assessing the Geographic Context of Risk Perception and Behavioral Response to Potential Ebola Exposure |
title_sort | assessing the geographic context of risk perception and behavioral response to potential ebola exposure |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6427407/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30866474 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16050831 |
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