Research on Emissions, Air Quality, Climate and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana (REACCTING)

University of Colorado Boulder (CU)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Growth Retardation; Inflammation

Treatments: Device: Philips stove; Device: Gyapa stove

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT04633135

REACCTING

GEO-1211668 (Other Grant/Funding Number)

RD-8354201 (Other Grant/Funding Number)

Details and patient eligibility

About

REACCTING (Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana) is an interdisciplinary randomized cookstove intervention study in the Kassena-Nankana District of Northern Ghana. The study tests two types of biomass burning stoves that have the potential to meet local cooking needs and represent different "rungs" in the cookstove technology ladder: a locally-made, low-tech Gyapa rocket stove and the imported, highly efficient Philips gasifier stove. Intervention households were randomized into four different groups, three of which received different combinations of two improved stoves, while the fourth group serves as a control for the duration of the study. Diverse measurements assess different points along the causal chain linking the intervention to final outcomes of interest. The investigators assess stove use and cooking behavior, cooking emissions, household air pollution and personal exposure, health burden, and local to regional air quality. Integrated analysis and modeling will tackle a range of interdisciplinary science questions, including examining ambient exposures among the regional population, assessing how those exposures might change with different technologies and behaviors, and estimating the comparative impact of local behavior and technological changes versus regional climate variability and change on local air quality and health outcomes.

Enrollment: 200 patients

Sex: All

Ages: Under 55 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion

Individual Participants:

• Classified as "rural"
• Uses biofuel as main cooking fuel source (firewood, animal waste, crop residue/sawdust)
• Uses borehole as main water source (to facilitate social network analysis linking household's knowledge and attitudes toward stoves to experience of social contacts);
• Does not have electricity (to permit possible addition of lighting intervention at a later date);
• Has a woman in household aged 18-55 and at least one child under five (since women and children are the most vulnerable to cookstove smoke and are thus the main focus of our health measures).

Clusters:

• No more than 25% classified as urban
• Accessible year-round (determined by field staff)
• Having at least 10 eligible households (in line with the participant criteria above)

Exclusion:

• Household could not be located
• Household declined to participate

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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200 participants in 4 patient groups

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Households enrolled in the control arm of the study did not receive either improved cookstove

Gyapa/Gyapa

Experimental group

Description:

Households enrolled in the Gyapa/Gyapa arm of the study received two Gyapa stoves for free

Treatment:

Device: Gyapa stove

Gyapa/Philips

Experimental group

Description:

Households enrolled in the Gyapa/Philips arm of the study received one Gyapa stove and one Philips stove for free

Treatment:

Device: Gyapa stove

Device: Philips stove

Philips/Philips

Experimental group

Description:

Households enrolled in the Philips/Philips arm of the study received two Philips stoves for free

Treatment:

Device: Philips stove