Community-Engaged Research: A Tool to Advance Cookstove Interventions

Nearly 3 billion people rely on biomass combustion to meet basic domestic energy needs. Many households use traditional cookstoves to meet these energy needs, which can result in extremely high indoor air pollution concentrations. Indoor air pollution from biomass combustion accounts for an estimated 3.9 million premature deaths per year, representing about 4.8% of the global disease burden. Improved stove designs have the potential to substantially reduce indoor air pollution exposures. However, there are few randomized intervention trials, and previous stove intervention studies have been plagued by low improved stove adoption and sustained use, severely limiting interpretations of these studies. This research proposes to conduct community surveys and in-depth interviews among Honduran cookstove users to gain insight into the complex pathways surrounding barriers to and predictors of sustained improved cookstove adoption (among the target population for the proposed intervention). This information will be used to conduct and enhance a randomized improved cookstove intervention among 300 Honduran families, incorporating qualitative and quantitative measures of cookstove use and measuring pre- to post-intervention changes in pollutant exposures and subclinical indicators of cardiovascular health.

The primary goals are twofold:

* To incorporate community-engaged approaches throughout all aspects of the research * To maximize sustained stove use (thereby maximizing the health impact of the intervention) to achieve valid exposure-response estimates.

Both objectives utilize innovative strategies to fill knowledge gaps. The research team will build upon previous studies in Latin America that have focused on identifying and validating appropriate field techniques for exposure and health assessments in rural areas of developing countries.

In summary, the proposed project will provide insight regarding barriers/predictors of sustained cookstove adoption, an issue impeding research in this field; assess the relationship between stove use and indicators of cardiovascular health, a substantial and quickly growing disease burden in developing countries; and result in a more comprehensive and valid assessment of the impact of a cookstove intervention.