Project Design and Methodology. Provide a detailed description of the methodologies and approaches that the organization proposes to adopt or utilize in order to achieve the scope of work in the Terms of Reference, keeping in mind the appropriateness to local conditions and project environment including accountability to FOs, gender equality and women’s empowerment, value for money, capacity building of national institutions as well as environmental and social impact. Please ensure that explanations are provided as to whether any work will be sub-contracted (to whom, what % of work, the rationale for sub-contracting, and the proposed role to be assigned).
Project Design and Methodology. Since February 2017, the CHAP trial has been enrolling a target of 180 female participants. To be eligible for the CHAP, women must be 25–64 years old, be the primary cook, be a full-time resident in their current location for at least 6 months, be capable of understanding study procedures, providing informed consent, and responding to questionnaires. Additionally, they must also use biomass fuels daily for cooking and have a cooking area separate from their sleeping area. The latter criterion was added to exclude households that use biomass fuel stoves to heat their living space. Women were excluded if they have hypertension. Hypertension was assessed as whether women are taking antihypertension medications, have systolic blood pressure ≥ 140 mmHg, have diastolic pressure ≥ 90 mmHg, or have a diagnosis of COPD (defined as post-bronchodilator FEV1/FVC below the lower limit of normal of a reference population). Women were also excluded if they smoked cigarettes daily, were pregnant or had plans to become pregnant in the next year, had active pulmonary tuberculosis, or were taking anti-tuberculosis medications. After enrollment, information was collected on socio-demographic characteristics, household characteristics, and cooking practices [17]. Collection of baseline data was still underway when this thesis was conducted, and the enrollment data is still being entered and cleaned, but as of March 5, 2018, our preliminary data indicate 569 women were assessed for eligibility and 181 enrolled. A total of 364 were excluded, at most 19 were excluded due to hypertension, and 131 were excluded because they do not primarily use a biomass stove. 24 women had dropped out. For more on enrollment, see Figure 2. CONSORT form - CHAP Enrollment March 5, 2018 – Preliminary Data in the Tables & Figures chapter.
