Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-1-2024
Department
Medicine
Abstract
National opinions on a wide variety of public health topics can change over time and have highly contextual nuances. This study is a follow-up to prior inquiries into the knowledge of wastewater-based epidemiology, privacy concerns surrounding sample collection, and the use of data acquired, along with privacy awareness from an online survey conducted in the metropolitan United States during the winter of 2023. Mentions of wastewater-surveillance-related terms in the media remained common. Towards the outbreak tail in 2023, public support for surveillance of toxins (91%), diseases (91%), terrorist threats (87%), illicit drugs (70%), prescription medications (69%), and gun residue (60%) remained high. There was less support for surveillance of alcohol consumption (49%), mental illness (46%), healthy eating (37%), and lifestyle behaviors (35%). In terms of geographic scale, most respondents supported citywide surveillance (85%) with markedly lower levels of support for smaller (less anonymous) geographic scales covered by specific locations. Wastewater surveillance does not receive the public pushback that other COVID-19-related health system actors have witnessed. Instead, the public supports the expansion of wastewater surveillance as a standard to complement public health tools in other areas of health protection.
Original Publication Information
Rochelle H. Holm, Lauren B. Anderson, Heather D. Ness, A. Scott LaJoie, Ted Smith; Towards the outbreak tail, what is the public opinion about wastewater surveillance in the United States?. J Water Health 1 August 2024; 22 (8): 1409–1418.
ThinkIR Citation
Holm, Rochelle H.; Anderson, Lauren B.; Ness, Heather D.; LaJoie, A. Scott; and Smith, Ted, "Towards the outbreak tail, what is the public opinion about wastewater surveillance in the United States?" (2024). Faculty and Staff Scholarship. 979.
https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/979
DOI
10.2166/wh.2024.074
ORCID
0000-0001-8849-1390
Comments
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits copying, adaptation and redistribution, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).