Huswah Sideeq, MPH’s Post

The past weeks have been draining. Referring to one of my posts where I mentioned how excited I was about working with a client (a doctoral student from the University of Leeds, UK). Her research was based on the exposure of school children (aged 10-12) to particulate matter in the air, in schools and homes and she needed an African context. We had quite some difficulty in recruiting participants into the study. Someone who told us he could get us the study participants since he is also in the field couldn't come through like we had expected. The fact that we were required to install a device that measures this parameter in the homes of selected kids, met with a lot of parental rejections, which was expected to an extent. The first few days of week 1 were a struggle, trying to get consents from parents to use their homes. However, at the end of the week, we were able to successfully recruit all participants needed. Things began well and we were able to get very kind participants who were willing to help charge the device with the power source provided whenever it ran low, we had others who were so enthusiastic about the research and curious about the outcome, we had a parent offer us meal when we went to take some readings at her residence. Although, this research has been overwhelming, however ,I'm grateful for the challenge, the gift of people and I've learnt the power of utilizing a well-laid down informed consent. #environmentalhealthresearch #airpollution #climatechannge