Infectious diseases risk perception between health professionals and the general public
ABSTRACT
The present project was carried out to investigate risk perception of five infectious diseases: Tuberculosis, Malaria, Hepatitis, Chronic Diarrhea, and HIV/AIDS among the general public and health professionals. The study performed analysis of the perceptions of the risks associated with the above mentioned infectious diseases in a sample of 400 individuals drawn from six communities, representative of the Chilean lower income sector from the southwest zone of the metropolitan region.
The purpose of this research was to improve our understanding of factors that affect risk perceptions of infectious diseases. Understanding such factors would us help anticipate the way people react to some risks. It will also facilitate communication among experts, lay people, and policy makers, which would in turn prevent harm to people and improve quality of life.
Health professionals had the highest risk perception scores when asked about HIV/AIDS followed by hepatitis, tuberculosis, malaria, and finally chronic diarrhea. Among the general public malaria had the highest risk perception score followed by HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and chronic diarrhea.
Scores were created to describe how the subjects perceived the risk of tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, chronic diarrhea, and HIV/AIDS on two scales; fear as a proxy for dread risk, and familiarity as a proxy for unknown risk. Risk scores were investigated separately for each of the five infectious diseases in which respondents were asked to rate their degree of fear and familiarity of the risk on ordinal scales of 1 to 4 with 1 being no fear, and 4 representing great deal of fear.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLLUSION
The findings of this study showed several differences in the risk perception score between health professionals and the general public. Health professionals had the highest risk perception scores when asked about HIV/AIDS followed by hepatitis, tuberculosis, malaria, and finally chronic diarrhea. Among the general public malaria had the highest risk perception.
This study showed a significant difference in the perception towards the risk of malaria, hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS between health professionals and the general public.
However, when sociodemographic variables were included in the model the only group difference that persisted was in risk perception scores of malaria, where a statistically significant difference was found to exist between the two groups toward the risk of malaria, general public perceived the risk of malaria 0.83 points more than the health professionals. Since the only significance difference that persisted between the two groups was the perception towards the risk of malaria, the rest of our discussion will be limited on this finding.
These risk differences between the two groups might be explained by each group’s view and judgment of the concept risk, when experts judge risk, their responses correlate highly with technical estimates of annual fatalities. Lay people on the other hand, their judgment of risk are related more to other hazard characteristics, for example two very important factors that determine lay people’s dread of risk were found to be global catastrophe and risks that involve members of future generations.
Risk Communication Implications
The current study used Probability, Fear, Control, and familiarity as the constructs of the
People’s risk perception, thus the study made the postulation that risk probabilities, Dread, Control and familiarity can be defined and measured. This seems a valid starting point for the assessment of the risk perception and for health advocacy. However, when interpreting these constructs into a risk communication efforts and using this to design intervention strategies wider perspectives are needed.
Public perceptions of risk involve values, attitudes, and beliefs, as well as power and trust, understanding realities of affect of these factors and accepting that these perceptions reflect intrinsic human techniques for survival, policy makers can incorporate these values, as well as fact-based analysis, into their risk management decision making.
It is important to understand that both groups have something valid to contribute. Therefore, it is inevitable to have risk communication and risk management strategies that are structured as a two-way process addressing and at the same time understanding perceptions of the two groups. This also calls for the government and the policy makers to play a major role in handling conflicts over risk policies between the two groups. Finally, further study is inevitable to investigate the exact influence that gender and educational status as well as other demographic characteristics that were not considered in this study have on the perception of infectious diseases risk towards health, particularly in a developing country setting
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