Respiratory Disease Solution

Funding Year: 2017

Research Areas: Public Health

Regions: Asia

Respiratory diseases are a leading cause of child death globally, killing approximately 1.3 million children per year. Poor indoor air quality is a major cause of these infections, and there are indications that improving ventilation could reduce respiratory illnesses. This project will develop and validate a computational framework for predicting ventilation rates in a variety of low-income household layouts and ventilation designs.

The project will look at potential ventilation strategies for homes in Bangladesh where respiratory infections are responsible for approximately 22 percent of deaths in children under five years old. The research will engage with the balancing act between increasing ventilation to lower indoor air impacts while not increasing impacts from the ambient air outside homes in the city of Dhaka. The framework will provide essential information for analyzing results of an initial randomized control trial to evaluate the impact of ventilation interventions in homes in Bangladesh, and it will support the formulation of global ventilation recommendations.

Learn more about the Environmental Venture Projects grant program and other funded projects.

Principal Investigators:

Catherine Gorle, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Stephen Luby, Professor of Medicine

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