Environmental public health communication to engage stakeholders and foster social capacity in poorly involved communities living in industrial contaminated sites: the case study of Porto Torres (Italy)
Marsili Daniela- 1Environmental and Social Epidemiology Unit, Department of Environment and Health, National Institute of Health (ISS), Italy
- 2WHO Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health in Contaminated Sites, Rome, Italy, Italy
- 3Environment and Health, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy
This work aims to discuss the implementation of a communication plan as a key element of the epidemiological study to foster social capacity in the scarcely involved community of the industrial contaminated site of Porto Torres (Sardinia region, Italy). We established an inter-institutional working group committed to developing communication activities and materials ensuring multidisciplinary skills from social and communication sciences to collaborate with the environmental and health experts involved in the epidemiological study. The adopted methodological approach and communication strategy resulted in effective and successful engagement of local institutional and social actors in the design and implementation of targeted communication activities.Designing and implementing environmental public health communication processes with poorly involved communities residing close to industrially contaminated sites is critically important. In these areas, environmental noxious exposures associated with high health risks are frequently combined with low socioeconomic conditions. This calls upon mechanisms of environmental injustice, distributive and procedural, and emphasizes the need to prioritize interventions based on integrative strategies securing local communities' engagement through informed participation.Based on the lessons learned in this community-focused experience in Italy, we have identified key actions for suitable environmental public health communication to foster social capacity and promote procedural environmental justice in communities living in other industrial contaminated sites.
Keywords: participative communication process1, industrially contaminated sites2, stakeholders' engagement3, social capacity4, environmental justice5
Received: 05 May 2023;
Accepted: 27 Nov 2023.
Copyright: © 2023 Daniela, Pasetto and Iavarone. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dr. Marsili Daniela, National Institute of Health (ISS), Environmental and Social Epidemiology Unit, Department of Environment and Health, Rome, Italy