Human Biomonitoring Program: risk communication and consultation
Introduction
The building of policy relevant expertise on health and environmental issues is the main objective of the biomonitoring project in Flanders. The role of social scientists in the framework of the humane biomonitoring programme consists mainly of designing and testing dialogical and deliberative procedures of modern risk communication and cooperative policy oriented action research. Bringing complex issues of environment and health in a well-structured and discussible way involving a diversity of relevant actors, and being transparent in the communication, can broaden the knowledge-base and the public support, and thereby facilitating efficient policy-making.
Human Biomonitoring Program: risk communication and consultation
Because human biomonitoring involves al lot of both scientifically and socially complex and ethical issues, an elaborated communication of the results is crucial. External communication of biomonitoring results will be elaborated on the basis of scientific insights present in risk communication literature and the expertise acquired during previous biomonitoring campaigns. Two important practical principles in the communications are (i) ‘transparency’ in all communication (not only concerning results, but also on choices made during the process of design of the study, research, interpretation procedures, policy options, ...) and (ii) ‘participants first’ (participants of the campaigns should always be informed first). Other important viewpoints are:
- Everyone looks at environmental- and health problems from his or her background or perspective. Differences in risk perceptions are based on differences in defining the problem.
- All forms of knowledge (science, intuition, experience, values) are relevant and should be taken serious.
- Scientific controversies and uncertainties are normal, as a consequence of the complex character of environmental – and health research.
In close cooperation and negotiation with both the (medical and environmental) scientists and the policymakers, some experiments were set up, in order to ‘try out’ social scientific methods and theories with regard to risk assessment and communication, in practice. One example is a questionnaire on risk perception as part of the biomonitoring research. Comparable to the former biomonitoring campaigns (2002-2006), questionnaires will include questions on the perception of environment and health risks and trust in sources of information and responsibles for solutions for environmental health problems. Complementary questions (and resulting data) on socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics and social network of the participants will allow to assess awareness, opinions and attitudes of Flemish inhabitants and residents of specific regions (hot spots), with relevance to risk communication and risk management.
A more dialogical example is the design of an Action-plan. The outcome of surveillance is often not ready to be directly translated into policy supporting actions. Human biomonitoring helps to look more closely to the health impact of environmental exposure to humans by direct measurements in the human body. However no legal framework exists for the interpretation of the biomonitoring data and for transferring them into policy measures. Results are expressed with a degree of uncertainty. As soon as the data are communicated to participants, to the larger public and to stakeholders, they raise further concern. Two main issues arise (1) the health significance of the data and (2) the origin and pathways of the pollutants from the environment into the body. These aspects are relevant and human biomonitoring programs require from the start a strategy to take these concerns into account.
Together with medical and environmental scientific experts and policymakers, social scientists worked on the preparation of an Action-plan for interpretation and policy, containing three successive phases, each focussing on different aspects. The first phase focuses on prioritizing the results for policy uptake: how severe are specific results with regard to public health risks? The second phase focuses on two questions: what are the causes for a specific monitoring result and can we identify a (local) source for the pollution? In the third and final phase the focus is on the question: which policy measures are feasible in order to tackle the environmental problems? For each of these phases, a practical cycle is developed with different procedural steps, actors and roles. Parts of the procedure are an expert round and a jury debate.
The Action-plan starts where results come out of the surveillance system and need to be interpreted in order to translate them into policy action(s). More or less similar to the procedure of the Action-plan, we designed a Selection-procedure for specific human biomonitoring surveillance activities or hot spots. In 2009 a limited number of local environment and health issues will be investigated by biomonitoring. An important question is: on which issues to focus our research effort? Which problems are most urgent and in need of biomonitoring? We designed a procedure to make an inventory of possibly relevant issues and to select a limited number for research. We opened up our discussion and invited (other) scientists, policy representatives and stakeholders to propose research options. Moreover, this diversity of actors is involved in the selection procedure.
Staff
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Promotor-coordinator | Ilse Loots Department of Sociology, University Antwerp |
| Promotor-coördinator | Lieve Goorden Department of Environment and Technology, University Antwerp |
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| Wetenschappelijk medewerker | Hans Keune Department of Sociology, University Antwerp |
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| Wetenschappelijk medewerker | Bert Morrens Department of Sociology, University Antwerp |
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Promotor | Greet Schoeters, Departement of Environmental Toxicology, Flemish Institute for Technological Research |
| Scientific researcher | Gudrun Koppen, Departement of Environmental Toxicology, Flemish Institute for Technological Research |