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Virgillito C, Longo E, De Marco CM, Serini P, Zucchelli MV, Montarsi F, Severini F, Rosà R, Da Re D, Filipponi F, Manica M, Palmer J, Bartumeus F, Della Torre A, Caputo B. Involving citizen scientists in monitoring arthropod vectors of human and zoonotic diseases: The case of Mosquito Alert in Italy. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2024; 948:174847. [PMID: 39025142 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.174847] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/04/2024] [Revised: 07/12/2024] [Accepted: 07/15/2024] [Indexed: 07/20/2024]
Abstract
Citizen science has been particularly effective in gathering reliable, timely, large-scale data on the presence and distributions of animal species, including mosquito vectors of human and zoonotic pathogens. This involves the participation of citizen scientists in research projects, with success strongly dependent on the capacity to disseminate project information and engage citizen scientists to contribute their time. Mosquito Alert is a citizen science that aids in the system surveillances of vector mosquitoes. It involves citizen scientists providing expert-validated photos of targeted mosquitoes, along with records of bites and breeding sites. Since 2020 the system has been disseminated throughout Europe. This article uses models to analyze the effect of promotion activities carried out by the Mosquito Alert ITALIA team from October 2020 to December 2022 on the number of citizen scientists recruited and engaged in the project, and their performance in mosquito identification. Results show a high level of citizen scientist recruitment (N > 18.000; 37 % of overall European participants). This was achieved mostly through articles generated by ad hoc press releases detailing the app's goals and functioning. Press releases were more effective when carried out at the beginning and end of the mosquito season and when mosquito's public health significance was emphasized. Despite the high number of records received (N > 20.000), only 30 % of registered participants sent records, and the probability of a participant sending a record dropped off quickly over time after first registering. Among participants who contributed, ∼50 % sent 1 record, ∼30 % ≥3 and 4 % >10 records. Participants showed good capacity to identify mosquitoes and improve identification skills with app usage. The results will be valuable for anyone interested in evaluating citizen science, as participation and engagement are seldom quantitatively assessed. Our results are also useful for designing dissemination and education strategies in citizen science projects associated with arthropod vector monitoring.
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Affiliation(s)
- C Virgillito
- Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy
| | - E Longo
- Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy; Center Agriculture Food Environment, University of Trento, San Michele all'Adige, TN, Italy
| | - C M De Marco
- Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy
| | - P Serini
- Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy
| | | | - F Montarsi
- Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (IZSVe), Padua, Italy
| | - F Severini
- Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), Rome, Italy
| | - R Rosà
- Center Agriculture Food Environment, University of Trento, San Michele all'Adige, TN, Italy; Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, San Michele all'Adige, TN, Italy
| | - D Da Re
- Center Agriculture Food Environment, University of Trento, San Michele all'Adige, TN, Italy; Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, San Michele all'Adige, TN, Italy
| | - F Filipponi
- National Research Council - Institute for Environmental Geology and Geoengineering (CNR-IGAG), Montelibretti, RM, Italy
| | - M Manica
- Center for Health Emergencies, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy
| | - J Palmer
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
| | - F Bartumeus
- Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes (CEAB-CSIC), Girona, Spain; Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain
| | - A Della Torre
- Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy
| | - B Caputo
- Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy.
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Staccini P, Lau AY. Consumer Informatics and One Health: Shifting the Focus from the Individual to the Globe. Findings from the Yearbook 2023 Section on Education and Consumer Health Informatics. Yearb Med Inform 2023; 32:158-168. [PMID: 38147859 PMCID: PMC10751142 DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1768749] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/28/2023] Open
Abstract
OBJECTIVE To summarise the state of the art during the year 2022 in consumer health informatics and education, with a special emphasis on "One Health". METHODS We conducted a systematic search of articles published in PubMed. We build queries to merge terms related to "consumer health informatics", "one health", and "digital". We retrieved 94 potential articles for review. These articles were screened according to topic relevance and 12 were selected for consideration of best paper candidates, which were then presented to a panel of international experts for full paper review and scoring. The top five papers were discussed in a consensus meeting. Three papers received the highest score from the expert panel, and these papers were selected to be representative papers on consumer informatics for exploring one health from consumer perspective in the year 2022. RESULTS Bibliometrics analysis conducted on words found in abstracts of the 12 candidate papers revealed four clusters of articles, where clustering outcomes explained 96.91% of the dispersion. The first cluster composes three papers related to patient engagement in primary care practices, using digital-delivered diabetes prevention programmes, or exploring citizen involvement in co-designing environmental projects (such as air pollution exposure and health). The second cluster represents four papers related to digital health literacy and consumer behavior, such as digital vaccine literacy, and food labelling influences and whether displaying Nutri- and Eco-Score at food product level led to improved consumer choices. The third cluster consists of two papers exploring strategies to involve citizens in various science projects while analyzing the quality of citizen-collected data (e.g., mosquito bites or gastropod community dataset). The last cluster contains three papers related to the relationships between human behavior with their environment and their contribution to citizen science projects (e.g., biological water quality in the Netherlands distribution, composition, abundance of debris across sandy beaches in Australia and its regions, urbanization and reptile biodiversity across Florida). CONCLUSION Traditionally, consumer health informatics focuses on providing individuals with tools and resources to actively manage their own health. By incorporating a global health (or one health) perspective, our field is now at a crossroad, demanding us to think beyond the individual and challenging us to instill the thinking that our actions not only have consequences on the individual but also on the population and the environment. Perhaps this is also a reflective time for the consumer informatics field, to consider shifting the focus from the individual to one that is more aligned with one health, helping consumers gain awareness of how their actions impact on the individual, the population and the environment, and providing them with tools to work collectively to help decide how their actions may bring benefits (as well as harms) across these levels.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pascal Staccini
- URE RETINES, Faculté de Médecine, Université Côte d'Azur, Nice, France
| | - Annie Y.S. Lau
- Center for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, Australia
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Dekramanjian B, Bartumeus F, Kampen H, Palmer JRB, Werner D, Pernat N. Demographic and motivational differences between participants in analog and digital citizen science projects for monitoring mosquitoes. Sci Rep 2023; 13:12384. [PMID: 37524770 PMCID: PMC10390545 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-38656-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/24/2023] [Accepted: 07/12/2023] [Indexed: 08/02/2023] Open
Abstract
Worldwide, citizen scientists help to map the distribution of native and introduced mosquito species in a variety of programs, contributing to environmental research and management decisions. Participant background, behavior, and engagement may vary depending on the project design, especially between those using digital apps and those using physical samples, which in turn may impact the quality and representativeness of the data collected. During the analysis of the responses to a survey directed at citizen scientists participating in a digital and an analog program, we found significant differences in the respondents' demographic backgrounds. Diverse participant motivations and varying sentiments towards mosquitoes were observed, indicating differing susceptibility in response to the program messages. The results can be translated into recommendations to further strengthen the appeal of citizen science projects and to promote and sustain public engagement in environmental research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Berj Dekramanjian
- Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
| | - Frederic Bartumeus
- Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes (CEAB-CSIC), Blanes, Spain
- Centre de Recerca Ecològica i Aplicaicons Forestals (CREAF), Barcelona, Spain
- Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain
| | - Helge Kampen
- Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Greifswald, Insel Riems, Germany
| | - John R B Palmer
- Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Doreen Werner
- Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Müncheberg, Germany
| | - Nadja Pernat
- Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Müncheberg, Germany.
- Institute of Landscape Ecology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
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Johnston C, Vaux A, Cull B, Medlock J. Passive surveillance records including nuisance or suspected invasive/non-native mosquitoes in the United Kingdom, 2005-2021. JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN MOSQUITO CONTROL ASSOCIATION 2023. [DOI: 10.52004/jemca2022.0006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/17/2023]
Abstract
Alongside active surveillance at ports and land transport sites, the UK Health Security Agency runs a passive mosquito surveillance scheme: The Mosquito Recording Scheme (MRS). The MRS is a citizen-science scheme, it receives and identifies mosquitoes submitted by members of the public, including in response to nuisance biting incidents. The aims of the scheme are to detect unusual or invasive species, provide a log of reportable incidents of nuisance mosquito biting, and gain insight into the seasonality of British mosquito biting. Between 2005 and 2021, 286 submissions of mosquitoes were submitted to the MRS, all of which were native UK species, 23 specifically reported nuisance biting, with 92.7% of submissions from England. In total 16 species were submitted with Culiseta annulata (39%) and Culex pipiens s.l. (26% of submissions) the most common, with records of these species throughout the years. Case studies giving examples of a range of submissions and a flow chart of the workflow when receiving a submission are described. Reasons for the low incidence of submissions compared to comparable schemes in Europe are discussed and recommendations on how to improve the scheme is given.
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Affiliation(s)
- C.J. Johnston
- Medical Entomology and Zoonoses Ecology group, United Kingdom Health Security Agency, Porton Down, Salisbury, SP4 0JG, United Kingdom
| | - A.G.C. Vaux
- Medical Entomology and Zoonoses Ecology group, United Kingdom Health Security Agency, Porton Down, Salisbury, SP4 0JG, United Kingdom
| | - B. Cull
- Medical Entomology and Zoonoses Ecology group, United Kingdom Health Security Agency, Porton Down, Salisbury, SP4 0JG, United Kingdom
| | - J.M. Medlock
- Medical Entomology and Zoonoses Ecology group, United Kingdom Health Security Agency, Porton Down, Salisbury, SP4 0JG, United Kingdom
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Felgentreff ES, Buchholz S, Straka TM. From science to society to practice? Public reactions to the insect crisis in Germany. PEOPLE AND NATURE 2023. [DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10434] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/26/2023] Open
Affiliation(s)
| | - Sascha Buchholz
- Institute of Landscape Ecology University of Münster Münster Germany
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Ostermann‐Miyashita E, König HJ, Pernat N, Bellingrath‐Kimura SD, Hibler S, Kiffner C. Knowledge of returning wildlife species and willingness to participate in citizen science projects among wildlife park visitors in Germany. PEOPLE AND NATURE 2022. [DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10379] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Emu‐Felicitas Ostermann‐Miyashita
- Junior Research Group Human‐Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg Germany
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Thaer‐Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Berlin Germany
| | - Hannes J. König
- Junior Research Group Human‐Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg Germany
| | - Nadja Pernat
- Research Area 2: Land Use and Governance Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg Germany
- Institute of Landscape Ecology, Animal Ecology Research Group University of Münster Münster Germany
| | - Sonoko Dorothea Bellingrath‐Kimura
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Thaer‐Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Berlin Germany
- Research Area 2: Land Use and Governance Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg Germany
| | - Sophia Hibler
- Junior Research Group Human‐Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg Germany
- Department of Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation University of Potsdam Potsdam Germany
| | - Christian Kiffner
- Junior Research Group Human‐Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg Germany
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