The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated the impacts of exposure to indoor air pollution from cooking fires as one of the four most critical global environmental health problems. In recent months, Assistant Professors Jay Graham and Amanda Northcross have been involved in a number of important and high-profile efforts to raise awareness and collect data on the impacts of exposure to indoor smoke from cooking fires in the developing world. Most recently, the two have co-authored a publication in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization recommending how to collect data critical for improving understanding of the problem.
Graham was recently asked to serve on an Implementation Science Network for clean cooking interventions run by the National Institutes of Health and US Agency for International Development. He is also the coauthor of an editorial published in the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives titled “Behavior Change Communication: A Key Ingredient for Advancing Clean Cooking.”
Northcross was one of 30 leading global public health researchers who traveled to Nepal for a three-day meeting in March to discuss how clean cooking impacts children’s health. The Child Survival Workshop, co-hosted by the Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and Johns Hopkins University, provided experts with an opportunity to exchange lessons from the field and to take a first look at early results of ongoing research evaluating the child health benefits of clean cookstoves and fuels.
In the new Bulletin of the World Health Organization article, Northcross and Graham discuss information that could be collected through national surveys to increase awareness and knowledge of the extent and impact of household air pollution. They explain why collecting detailed data on the type of cooking apparatus owned or used for cooking, as well as the fuel(s) used for cooking and lighting and how they are collected would improve our understanding of how cookstoves can impact public health.
Last year, the two researchers collaborated to organize a clean cookstoves discussion and demonstration held at GW to highlight some of the most promising solutions being developed to reduce exposure to smoke and other indoor air pollutants in people’s homes.