Impacts of Clean Cookstoves and Empowerment Training on Women's Health in Refugee Settings

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Status

Completed

Conditions

Relationship, Family

Mental Health Wellness 1

Adherence

Food Insecurity

Gender-based Violence

Empowerment

Treatments

Device: Inyenyeri clean cookstove and fuel system

Behavioral: I-ACT (Individual, Agency-Centered Training) workshop

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT04081441

7806

Details and patient eligibility

About

The main objective of this study is to understand the links and outcomes of adoption of a cleaner cookstove/fuel and exposure to a personal empowerment training on women's health outcomes in a Congolese refugee camp in Rwanda, with a focus on gender-based violence (GBV).

Full description

This randomized controlled trial examines the impacts of a phased-in integrated technology -behavior change intervention on women's health with a focus on gender-based violence. In a population of approximately 1500 Congolese households in Kigeme refugee camp in Rwanda, two interventions are randomly deployed in the camp. The first intervention is the Inyenyeri cookstove/pellet fuel system, a Tier 4 clean cookstove system; the second intervention is a behavior change intervention (referred to as I-ACT, Individual-Agency-Centered Training) designed to foster personal agency and empowerment, given to women and, if applicable, their male partner. Analyses will be done with interviews on 1500 women (ages 18-45) from these households that may have received one, both or none of the interventions, either as the full sample or the sub-sample of partnered-only women.

Enrollment

1,555 patients

Sex

Female

Ages

18 to 45 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Study participants are between the ages of 18 years - 45 years of age
Reported as currently living in a refugee camp with no intention to relocate
Has lived in any refugee camp for at least 1 year and can be interviewed in private
Has the ability to give informed consent

Exclusion criteria

Inability to provide informed consent
Individuals having evidence of significant illness and/or are not able to engage fully in the surveys
Women younger than 18 or over 45 years of age
Those who have not lived continuously in a refugee camp setting for the past 12 months
If two or more women live in a household, only one of these will be included in the study. The one responsible for fuel purchase/collection will be selected. If more than one woman is responsible for fuel collection, we will randomly choose one woman to participate in the study.

Trial design

Primary purpose

Prevention

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Factorial Assignment

Masking

None (Open label)

1,555 participants in 4 patient groups

Inyenyeri clean cookstove/fuel

Experimental group

Description:

A tier 4 clean Mimi-moto cookstove/pellet system

Treatment:

Device: Inyenyeri clean cookstove and fuel system

I-ACT behavioral empowerment intervention

Experimental group

Description:

A culturally adapted 2-day personal empowerment workshop (based on the Individual, Agency-Centered Training (I-ACT) to women and modified, condensed 1-day training for their male partners, if applicable

Treatment:

Behavioral: I-ACT (Individual, Agency-Centered Training) workshop

Cookstove and I-ACT empowerment

Experimental group

Description:

Access to both the clean cookstove system and I-ACT empowerment training

Treatment:

Device: Inyenyeri clean cookstove and fuel system

Behavioral: I-ACT (Individual, Agency-Centered Training) workshop

I-ACT Waitlisted control

Other group

Description: