Systems Science Approaches for Global Environmental Health Research: Enhancing Intervention Design and Implementation for Household Air Pollution (HAP) and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Programs.

Background: Two of the most important causes of global disease fall in the realm of environmental health: household air pollution (HAP) and poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) conditions. Interventions, such as clean cookstoves, household water treatment, and improved sanitation facilities, have great potential to yield reductions in disease burden. However, in recent trials and implementation efforts, interventions to improve HAP and WASH conditions have shown few of the desired health gains, raising fundamental questions about current approaches.

Associations between household air pollution and reduced lung function in women and children in rural southern India.

Half of the world's population still relies on solid fuels to fulfill its energy needs for cooking and space heating, leading to high levels of household air pollution (HAP), adversely affecting human health and the environment. A cross-sectional cohort study was conducted to investigate any associations between: (1) HAP metrics (mass concentration of particulate matter of aerodynamic size less than 2.5 μm (PM ), lung-deposited surface area (LDSA) and carbon monoxide (CO)); (2) a range of household and socio-demographic characteristics; and (3) lung function for women and children exposed daily to biomass cookstove emissions, in rural southern India.

Adoption and sustained use of cleaner cooking fuels in rural India: a case control study protocol to understand household, network, and organizational drivers.

Background: Implementing efficient stoves and clean fuels in low and middle-income countries are critical for improving health of poor women and children and improve the environment. Cleaner biomass stoves, however, perform poorly against the World Health Organization's indoor air quality guidelines. This has shifted the focus to systematic dissemination and implementation of cleaner cooking systems such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) among poor communities.

Implementation Science to Accelerate Clean Cooking for Public Health.

Clean cooking has emerged as a major concern for global health and development because of the enormous burden of disease caused by traditional cookstoves and fires. The World Health Organization has developed new indoor air quality guidelines that few homes will be able to achieve without replacing traditional methods with modern clean cooking technologies, including fuels and stoves. However, decades of experience with improved stove programs indicate that the challenge of modernizing cooking in impoverished communities includes a complex, multi-sectoral set of problems that require implementation research.

Dynamics of sustained use and abandonment of clean cooking systems: study protocol for community-based system dynamics modeling.

Background: More than 3 billion of the world's population are affected by household air pollution from relying on unprocessed solid fuels for heating and cooking. Household air pollution is harmful to human health, climate, and environment. Sustained uptake and use of cleaner cooking technologies and fuels are proposed as solutions to this problem.

Real-time particulate and CO concentrations from cookstoves in rural households in Udaipur, India.

Almost 3 billion people around the globe use traditional three-stone cookstoves and open fires to warm and feed themselves. The World Health Organization estimates annual mortality rates from domestic solid fuel combustion to be around 4 million. One of the most affected countries is India.

Social, economic, and resource predictors of variability in household air pollution from cookstove emissions.

We examine if social and economic factors, fuelwood availability, market and media access are associated with owning a modified stove and variation in household emissions from biomass combustion, a significant environmental and health concern in rural India. We analyze cross-sectional household socio-economic data, and PM(2.5) and particulate surface area concentration in household emissions from cookstoves (n=100).

Evaluation of mass and surface area concentration of particle emissions and development of emissions indices for cookstoves in rural India.

Mass-based dose parameters (for example, PM(2.5)) are most often used to characterize cookstove particulate matter emissions. Particle surface area deposition in the tracheobronchial (TB) and alveolar (A) regions of the human lung is also an important metric with respect to health effects, though very little research has investigated this dose parameter for cookstove emissions.