Pressing the Issue: Effects of News Media On Private Well Water Testing Behavior in Maine

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: 

Evidence-based communication strategies offer great potential to change personal protective behaviors and improve public health. This research integrates theories from communication, public health, and economics to explore how, if at all, newspaper coverage of arsenic contamination encourages private well users to test their water. We examine relationships among media content and testing behaviors to gauge an overall impact and compare the relative impacts of different types of content. Our investigation draws from extensive literatures on mass media campaigns, risk perceptions, household attitudes and behaviors, and program evaluation. Overall, we hypothesize that coverage will influence households to test their water. Further, we compare the influence of content with hypothesized positive impacts on testing, including prescriptive health communications and communications that are part of a sustained campaign. We also consider spatial patterns in health communications and testing, hypothesizing that testing increases at higher rates in areas located closer to areas identified as higher risk.

Methods:  We employ statistical and spatial analysis methods to examine relationships among newspaper coverage of arsenic contamination and testing behaviors. Maine, USA serves as the study area for our research. For several reasons, Maine is an excellent setting in which to conduct this research. First, arsenic contamination of well water is a significant public health issue. Nearly half of Mainers rely on private wells for drinking water and estimates indicate that 11% of private wells have arsenic concentrations that exceed the federal health standard of 10 ppb, with some wells showing concentrations as high as 1,000 ppb. Second, households are not testing at recommended rates.  There are no state regulations related to private well water testing, but state health officials recommend testing private wells for arsenic every 3 to 5 years. Yet, only 40% of Maine’s private wells have ever been tested for arsenic. Lastly, Maine offers great access to historical communications and testing data. We assemble data describing newspaper communications and testing behavior covering the years from 1993 to 2012.  We employ discrete regression approaches to assess statistically the influence of these articles on arsenic test requests. We use spatial analysis methods to assess the spatial distribution of exposure of households to communications on arsenic and testing behaviors over time.

Results:  Using data from 1993 to 2003, our model reveals a positive correlation between newspaper coverage and testing behavior. In addition, we find positive and significant relationships among testing and content with recommendations to test and stressing locations of arsenic clusters. Based on these results, the study has been expanded to include a second time period (2001-2012) and to take on additional research questions. The results from this second study are expected in May 2013.

Conclusions: Empirical evaluations have great potential to improve tracking of health communications and impacts.

Implications for research and/or practice: 

With few resources for large-scale campaigns of any type to change well water testing behaviors, this research provides empirical evidence to inform the media activities of the Maine CDC and other agencies.