Methods

The literature review was conducted by scanning the UConn Library online, Anthrosource, and Journal of Social Science and Medicine databases. It revealed that very little work exists on the West Nile Virus due to the low number of sufferers in CT, so we decided to focus on Lyme Disease for our interviews.

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Altogether we conducted 6 semi-structured interviews:

- 2 illness narratives of people with Lyme Disease (informants 1+2)

- 3 interviews with members of CT outdoor organizations, including The Last Green Valley Inc. (informant 3) and UConn's Outing Club (informants 4+5)

- 1 interview with a scientist specializing in vector-borne diseases (informant 6)  

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All interviews were conducted in March 2019. Informants were asked about how often they encounter insect vectors, how they protect themselves from bites, if they know of anyone affected by VBD, if they have detected changes in temperature recently, and what they believe should be done to tackle global warming. For the illness narratives, questions included 'what do you think caused your problem?', 'why do you think it started when it did?', 'what do you think your sickness does to you?', 'how severe is your sickness?', 'what are the chief problems your sickness causes?', 'what do you fear most about your sickness?', and 'what kind of treatment do you think you should receive?' to work out the person's explanatory model (Kandula 2013). 

Limitations? 

Our sample was biased towards those either already impacted by vector-borne diseases or particularly involved with outdoor activities that increase one's exposure to insect vectors. 

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