Understanding the knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of VFR travelers towards travel health-related risks

VFR travelers are those individuals who have immigrated to Canada, who along with their families and Canadian-born children, visit their friends and relatives abroad, often to their countries of origin. To better understand the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours of VFR travelers towards travel health-related risks, a multilingual survey of Hamilton-based VFR travelers was conducted in 2022-2023. The survey was made available in English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Filipino, Punjabi, Turkish, and Somali. There were 65 survey responses across five languages. Results showed variability in knowledge (e.g., malaria, yellow fever, rabies), and influential factors affecting how likely a traveler was to seek health advice included recommendation by a family doctor/pharmacist and their perception of the lack of reliable healthcare at their destination. This pilot project demonstrated that it was feasible to advertise the survey and recruit in diverse communities, translate the survey from English to multiple languages, collect multilingual survey data online, and translate survey responses to English for analysis and interpretation. Knowledge translation opportunities exist to create educational materials for VFR travelers on key travel health-related topics e.g., protecting yourself and your family against mosquito bites, how malaria is spread, safe drinking water, prevention and treatment of traveler’s diarrhea, and travel precautions during pregnancy.