Rethinking and mapping environmental health literacy and contaminants in Old Tulaku, greater Accra region of Ghana

Abstract

Environmental contaminants are a major source of global burden of morbidity. While environmental health literacy framework has been used to understand people’s competencies to comprehend environmental health information, there is paucity of research that examines households’ knowledge towards environmental contaminants in poor urban setting while employing geovisualization techniques. Therefore, this study has two objectives: (1) to examine the association between people’s knowledge and risk perceptions of contaminants, and environmental health literacy levels, and (2) explore the relationship between environmental health literacy, and points of environmental exposure through geographic representation. Drawing on health literacy models, a survey was administered to 254 household heads in Old Tulaku. A GPS-enabled location-based software was used. The analyses strategy for the survey and mapped environmental data principally included multiple linear regression modeling, clustering, and buffer analysis. The study found that higher environmental risk perception was associated with higher environmental health literacy. Also, there is disjoin between acknowledgment of the presence of environmental contaminants and households prioritizing discussion on preventive measures on encountering chemical waste. The mapping shows several points of contaminants exposure across the community. These findings suggest a need for community engagement strategies on the potential impact of contaminants to enhance environmental health literacy.

Keywords

• Health literacy
• contaminants
• slums
• geovisualization
• chemical waste
• Human Geography