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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,...

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Autores principales: Shook, Eric, Curtis, Andrew, Curtis, Jacqueline, Gibson, Gregory, Vander Horst, Anthony, Little, Virginia, Woolverton, Christopher
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
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.
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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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