Environmental awareness gained during a citizen science project in touristic resorts is maintained after 3 years since participation

The research leading to these results has received funding from Project AWARE Foundation, ASTOI Association, Milano, Ministry of Tourism of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Settemari S. p. A Tour Operator, Scuba Nitrox Safety International, Viaggio nel Blu Diving Center.Tourism is one of the largest economic sectors in the world. It has a positive effect on the economy of many countries, but it can also lead to negative impacts on local ecosystems. Informal environmental education through Citizen Science (CS) projects can be effective in increasing citizen environmental knowledge and awareness in the short-term. A change of awareness could bring to a behavioral change in the long-term, making tourism more sustainable. However, the long-term effects of participating in CS projects are still unknown. This is the first follow-up study concerning the effects of participating in a CS project on cognitive and psychological aspects at the basis of pro-environmental behavior. An environmental education program was developed, between 2012 and 2013, in a resort in Marsa Alam, Egypt. The study directly evaluated, through paper questionnaires, the short-term (after 1 week or 10 days) retention of knowledge and awareness of volunteers that had participated in the activities proposed by the program. After three years, participants were re-contacted via email to fill in the same questionnaire as in the short-term study, plus a new section with psychological variables. 40.5% of the re-contacted participants completed the follow-up questionnaires with a final sample size of fifty-five people for this study. Notwithstanding the limited sample size, positive trends in volunteer awareness, personal satisfaction regarding the CS project, and motivation to engage in pro-environmental behavior in the long-term were observed.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Mean score of the environmental education evaluation questionnaire.

<p><i>Tot</i> represents the mean score of the overall questionnaires, <i>Know</i> represents the mean score of the reef biology questions and <i>Awar</i> represents the mean score of the human impact questions. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals (CI), N = 212.</p

Mean score of the environmental education evaluation questionnaire.

<p><i>Tot</i> represents the mean score of the overall questionnaires, <i>Know</i> represents the mean score of the reef biology questions and <i>Awar</i> represents the mean score of the human impact questions. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals (CI), N = 212.</p

Environmental awareness gained during a citizen science project in touristic resorts is maintained after 3 years since participation

Tourism is one of the largest economic sectors in the world. It has a positive effect on the economy of many countries, but it can also lead to negative impacts on local ecosystems. Informal environmental education through Citizen Science (CS) projects can be effective in increasing citizen environmental knowledge and awareness in the short-term. A change of awareness could bring to a behavioral change in the long-term, making tourism more sustainable. However, the long-term effects of participating in CS projects are still unknown. This is the first follow-up study concerning the effects of participating in a CS project on cognitive and psychological aspects at the basis of pro-environmental behavior. An environmental education program was developed, between 2012 and 2013, in a resort in Marsa Alam, Egypt. The study directly evaluated, through paper questionnaires, the short-term (after 1 week or 10 days) retention of knowledge and awareness of volunteers that had participated in the activities proposed by the program. After three years, participants were re-contacted via email to fill in the same questionnaire as in the short-term study, plus a new section with psychological variables. 40.5% of the re-contacted participants completed the follow-up questionnaires with a final sample size of fifty-five people for this study. Notwithstanding the limited sample size, positive trends in volunteer awareness, personal satisfaction regarding the CS project, and motivation to engage in pro-environmental behavior in the long-term were observed

Womenʼs assessment of the quality of hospital-based perinatal care by mode of birth in Romania during the COVID-19 pandemic : Results from the IMAgiNE EURO study

Objective: To assess women's perceptions of the quality of maternal and newborn care (QMNC) received in hospitals in Romania during the COVID-19 pandemic by mode of birth. Methods: A validated anonymous online questionnaire based on WHO quality measures. Subgroup analysis of spontaneous vaginal birth (SVB), emergency cesarean, and elective cesarean and multivariate analyses were performed, and QMNC indexes were calculated. Maternal age, educational level, year of birth, mother born in Romania, parity, type of hospital, and type of professionals assisting the birth were used for multivariate analysis. Results: A total of 620 women completed the survey. Overall, several quality measures suggested gaps in QMNC in Romania, with the lowest QMNC indexes reported for provision of care and availability of resources. Women who had either elective or emergency cesarean compared with those who had SVB more frequently lacked early breastfeeding (OR 2.04 and 2.13, respectively), skin-to-skin contact (OR 1.73 and 1.75, respectively), rooming-in (OR 2.07 and 1.96, respectively), and exclusive breastfeeding at discharge (OR 2.27 and 1.64, respectively). Compared with elective cesarean, emergency cesarean had higher odds of ineffective communication by healthcare providers (OR 1.65), lack of involvement in choices (OR 1.58), insufficient emotional support (OR 2.07), and no privacy (OR 2.06). Compared with other modes of birth, a trend for lower QMNC indexes for emergency cesarean was observed for all domains, while for elective cesarean the QMNC index for provision of care was significantly lower. Conclusion: Quality indicators of perinatal care remain behind targets in Romania, with births by cesarean the most affected. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04847336

Risk of congenital malformation following first trimester mRNA COVID-19 vaccine exposure in pregnancy: the COVI-PREG prospective cohort.

This study aimed to evaluate the risk of congenital malformation among pregnant women exposed to the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during the first trimester of pregnancy, which is a developmental period where the fetus is at risk of teratogenicity. Pregnant women were prospectively enrolled from March 2021 to March 2022, at the time of COVID-19 vaccination. Pregnant women exposed to at least one dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine from conception to 11 weeks of gestations and 6 days were compared to pregnant women exposed to the vaccine from 12 weeks to the end of pregnancy. The primary outcome was a confirmed congenital malformation at birth. A total of 1450 pregnant women were enrolled including 124 in the first trimester and 1326 in the second and third trimester. The overall proportion of congenital malformation was 0.81% (n=1/124; 95%CI 0.02-4.41) and 0.83% (n=11/1326; 95% CI 0.41-1.48) among pregnant exposed to the COVID-19 vaccine during the first and second/third trimester, respectively. First trimester exposure was not associated with a higher risk of congenital malformation with a relative risk (RR) of 0.89 (95%CI 0.12-6.80) with no significant changes after adjustment through exploratory analysis. Pregnant women exposed to mRNA COVID-19 vaccine before 12 weeks of gestation did not have an increased risk of congenital malformation compared to women exposed outside the teratogenic window. As vaccination is safe and effective, emphasis must be placed on promoting vaccination during pregnancy

Participating in a citizen science monitoring program: implications for environmental education

Tourism is of growing economical importance to many nations, in particular for developing countries. Although tourism is an important economic vehicle for the host country, its continued growth has led to on-going concerns about its environmental sustainability. Coastal and marine tourism can directly affect the environment through direct and indirect tourist activities. For these reasons tourism sector needs practical actions of sustainability. Several studies have shown how education minimizes the impact on and is proactive for, preserving the natural resources. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a citizen science program to improve the environmental education of the volunteers, by means of questionnaires provided to participants to a volunteer-based Red Sea coral reef monitoring program (STEproject). Fifteen multiple-choice questions evaluated the level of knowledge on the basic coral reef biology and ecology and the awareness on the impact of human behaviour on the environment. Volunteers filled in questionnaires twice, once at the beginning, before being involved in the project and again at the end of their stay, after several days participation in the program. We found that the participation in STEproject significantly increased both the knowledge of coral reef biology and ecology and the awareness of human behavioural impacts on the environment, but was more effective on the former. We also detected that tourists with a higher education level have a higher initial level of environmental education than less educated people and that the project was more effective on divers than snorkelers. This study has emphasized that citizen science projects have an important and effective educational value and has suggested that tourism and diving stakeholders should increase their commitment and efforts to these programs. Copyright: \ua9 2015 Branchini et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited