Exploring Respiratory Health Outcomes From Sustained Use of Efficient Cookstoves

Summary

Household air pollution (HAP) is a leading risk factor for global burden of disease. Resource-constrained communities of the world especially women and children are significantly impacted by this challenge. To address household air pollution, cleaner and more efficient improved cookstoves (ICS) have been disseminated to low resource communities. Although there has been initial uptake of these stoves, sustained use has been inconsistent adding to the challenge of household air pollution. There is limited understanding at the intersections of social, ecological, and technical determinants of sustained use of ICS, and how is sustained use of ICS associated with exposure and health outcomes in poor communities.

The overarching goal of this exploratory study is to initiate a comprehensive research program that will facilitate the use of ICS and investigate whether they render significant health benefits among rural Indian households.

The investigators installed ICS (model: Eco-Chulla XXL) in select households that primarily use biomass for cooking, and evaluate the intervention based on three specific aims:

1. To generate preliminary emissions data \[particulate matter - mass and surface area based, carbon monoxide (CO)\] from ICS and its effect on respiratory health outcomes that will facilitate the development of a pivotal clean cookstove intervention
2. To generate effect size data that establish the feasibility and inform the sample size of a pivotal trial whose primary objective will be sustained improvements in the respiratory health of women and children in rural India
3. To evaluate factors which enable and hinder the sustained use of clean cookstove technologies by the rural poor in India so that the investigators can develop a more refined pivotal intervention focused on improving respiratory health

Conditions

• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
• Asthma

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Improved Cookstoves

Villages were randomized to have participating households assigned to either a traditional biomass burning cookstove or to an improved cookstove. Once the participating villages had been selected, the investigators used their list of eligible households within each village to randomly order these households. Within each village, the investigators then approached the eligible households in the order that had been randomly chosen and continued that process until four households within each village had agreed to participate. The selection of villages and households preceded randomization and was pursued with the clear understanding that group assignment would be random, and that participation reflected a willingness to be randomized to either study group.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Washington University School of Medicine

  collaborator OTHER

• Sri Ramachandra University

  collaborator OTHER

• Boston College

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

80 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-11-01

Primary Completion

2016-12-03

Completion

2026-12-31