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Bushfire Smoke and Children’s Health—Exploring a Communication Gap

The “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019/2020 in Australia generated smoke that persisted for over three months, mainly affecting Eastern Australia. Most communication strategies focused on the fire itself, revealing a knowledge gap in effective communication of the impact of bushfire smoke on health, e...

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Autores principales: Walsh, Erin I., Sargent, Ginny, Cevik-Compiegne, Burcu, Roberts, Michelle, Palfrey, Nicola, Gooyers-Bourke, Laura, Vardoulakis, Sotiris, Laachir, Karima
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9566720/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36231731
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912436
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author Walsh, Erin I.
Sargent, Ginny
Cevik-Compiegne, Burcu
Roberts, Michelle
Palfrey, Nicola
Gooyers-Bourke, Laura
Vardoulakis, Sotiris
Laachir, Karima
author_facet Walsh, Erin I.
Sargent, Ginny
Cevik-Compiegne, Burcu
Roberts, Michelle
Palfrey, Nicola
Gooyers-Bourke, Laura
Vardoulakis, Sotiris
Laachir, Karima
author_sort Walsh, Erin I.
collection PubMed
description The “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019/2020 in Australia generated smoke that persisted for over three months, mainly affecting Eastern Australia. Most communication strategies focused on the fire itself, revealing a knowledge gap in effective communication of the impact of bushfire smoke on health, especially for children and those living in non-English speaking minority groups. To address this, semi-structured qualitative interviews were undertaken with sixteen adults with caring (n = 11) or educational (n = 5) responsibilities for primary-school aged children (5–12 years, with some also having children up to 16 years) who had direct experience of the “Black Summer” bushfires. Overall, 43% (n = 7) of the sample spoke English as a first language, 25% (n = 4) spoke Turkish, with the remainder speaking Persian, Arabic, and Spanish. Thematic inductive qualitative content analysis revealed predominant themes of the role of parents and caregivers as conduits and curators of information. Air quality apps were the most common source of information. Language barriers and the lack of child-friendly methods of communication were highlighted as particular challenges. This qualitative study provides evidence for future development of communication strategies to better serve culturally and linguistically diverse individuals and the children in their care.
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spelling pubmed-95667202022-10-15 Bushfire Smoke and Children’s Health—Exploring a Communication Gap Walsh, Erin I. Sargent, Ginny Cevik-Compiegne, Burcu Roberts, Michelle Palfrey, Nicola Gooyers-Bourke, Laura Vardoulakis, Sotiris Laachir, Karima Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019/2020 in Australia generated smoke that persisted for over three months, mainly affecting Eastern Australia. Most communication strategies focused on the fire itself, revealing a knowledge gap in effective communication of the impact of bushfire smoke on health, especially for children and those living in non-English speaking minority groups. To address this, semi-structured qualitative interviews were undertaken with sixteen adults with caring (n = 11) or educational (n = 5) responsibilities for primary-school aged children (5–12 years, with some also having children up to 16 years) who had direct experience of the “Black Summer” bushfires. Overall, 43% (n = 7) of the sample spoke English as a first language, 25% (n = 4) spoke Turkish, with the remainder speaking Persian, Arabic, and Spanish. Thematic inductive qualitative content analysis revealed predominant themes of the role of parents and caregivers as conduits and curators of information. Air quality apps were the most common source of information. Language barriers and the lack of child-friendly methods of communication were highlighted as particular challenges. This qualitative study provides evidence for future development of communication strategies to better serve culturally and linguistically diverse individuals and the children in their care. MDPI 2022-09-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9566720/ /pubmed/36231731 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912436 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Walsh, Erin I.
Sargent, Ginny
Cevik-Compiegne, Burcu
Roberts, Michelle
Palfrey, Nicola
Gooyers-Bourke, Laura
Vardoulakis, Sotiris
Laachir, Karima
Bushfire Smoke and Children’s Health—Exploring a Communication Gap
title Bushfire Smoke and Children’s Health—Exploring a Communication Gap
title_full Bushfire Smoke and Children’s Health—Exploring a Communication Gap
title_fullStr Bushfire Smoke and Children’s Health—Exploring a Communication Gap
title_full_unstemmed Bushfire Smoke and Children’s Health—Exploring a Communication Gap
title_short Bushfire Smoke and Children’s Health—Exploring a Communication Gap
title_sort bushfire smoke and children’s health—exploring a communication gap
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9566720/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36231731
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912436
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