The following is a summary of “Engaging Communities in Emerging Infectious Disease Mitigation to Improve Public Health and Safety,” published in the July 2024 issue of Infectious Disease by Barak et al.
The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated the need for health preparedness. The community health-safety climate (HSC) measure is developed to analyze health behaviors during a pandemic.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to fill the gap between measures taken at the organizational level and individuals at the community level.
They studied qualitative and quantitative data from a February 2021 national survey to test reliability, multilevel construct, and predictive and nomologic validities. The HSC measure was unidimensional (Cronbach α=0.87). All communities had intense health-safety climates but with significant differences between communities (F=10.65; P<0.001), and HSC levels predicted readiness to adopt health-safety behaviors.
The results showed the relationship between HSC level and behavioral indicators and higher climate homogeneity with strong correlations.
They concluded that predicting community readiness to adopt health-safety behavior interventions before diseases spread can be a valuable tool for public health and policymakers during breakout.
Source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38916575/
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