Post #6

Does your work require IRB approvals? If Yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy. If No, explain why you don’t need IRB approval and identify situations when you might need IRB approval.

Our work absolutely requires IRB approval from both Lehigh and Sierra Leone. Our strategy involves not including identifiable information from our data collection, although we are collecting biospecimens. Also, we plan to ensure consent is obtained before the tests are administered and before the data is collected.

 

Develop an outline for your mid-semester presentations. What supporting evidence will you provide for each point?

How will you boost your credibility every step of the way?

 

• Explain the problem/opportunity being addressed from a macro perspective – a bird’s eye view can be the world at large, country, region (and/or relevant combinations). Use your judgment.

 

• • • Highest Maternal Mortality rate in the world 
    • Little to no access to easy to read and affordable test strips 

 

• Explain the problem/opportunity from a micro perspective – how does the problem affect the individual, the family, or relevant entity? What secondary problems does it cause?

 

• • • Can lead to miscarriages, or even death of the mother/baby
    • May lead to ostracization of the woman because she did not have a healthy birth
    • Mother is undeniably traumatized by the event

 

• Explain your approach and exactly how your proposed solution is supposed to work.

 

• • • We plan to take the issue on from a community perspective – important to involve current community structures in the solution
    • Have respected community figures with good reputations recommend the test strips to surrounding health outposts
    • Train health workers in the community to use and read the strips
    • Have the health workers refer the women to the proper healthcare facility

 

• What larger context/system does your project exist in? Illustrate how the various constituent sub-systems work together, and how the system interacts with external systems?

 

• • • System of Community Health Posts (CHPs) spread out throughout the region and their associated Community Health Workers (CHWs)
    • Works in tandem with this existing system

 

• Summarize what has been done before. What did you inherit this semester?

 

• • • So far permission have been obtained in country to sell the strips
    • Work with World Hope International to educate people in the community about UTIs and preeclampsia
    • Sell strips to CHPs

 

• Discuss the results of literature reviews, prototyping, experimentation, interviews, simulation, or modeling. Essentially, any work you have done this semester and plan to do.

• Work Done

 

• • • • Developed a more structured and accessible data structure
      • Making a system of communication for trained health workers

 

• Planned Work

 

• • • • By summer/July 2021, Ukweli should have a catchment population of 3 million

 

• Identify research/design challenges and detailed plans to address them 
  • Compliance in data collection – build incentives into the system
  • Verifying the data which is collected – have a secondary system of scanned hardcopy documents in addition to online forms

 

 

Blog #5

1. List ten things that make you feel human.

• Creating wood burnings (artwork)
• Sympathizing with other humans or living beings
• Enjoying listening to music
• Creating plans to achieve a variety of tasks based on logic and prior experience
• Learning new information – intellectual wealth
• Making up my own opinions about various topics
• Stress about non-life threatening situations (getting schoolwork done, maintaining social relationships, etc.)
• Determining what my goals are each day as well as longterm
• Feeling close to someone else
• Having the freedom to do as I please

2. Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the GSIF / LVSIF.

Specifically discuss

1. Why should I engage?

I must engage in order to efficiently and successfully use my skills and effort to give aid to those who need it. If I completely disregard the stakeholders who I am looking to impact then there are two negative outcomes which are negated by successfully engaging. One of these outcomes is that the solution I create is not integrated into the lives of the stakeholders and my efforts in essence were for nothing. The other outcome is that the solution is forced upon those who I believe can benefit and it damages the existing system and creates a feeling of disdain for outside support in general. Thus not only would it negatively impact myself and the community but also the broader swath of individuals looking to provide aid.

2. How must I engage?

I must engage in terms of three perspectives: environmentally, economically, and most importantly socially. To environmentally engage means that whatever my project is it should not negatively affect the environment which would lead to further issues down the line. Economic engagement is ensuring that the solution is financially feasible for the stakeholders, and hopefully even brings economic benefits to the community (jobs, money, etc.). Lastly, social engagement is making sure that the solution and the system which is implemented follows the social values of the community and the method that they things are introduced do not offend any parties.

3. With whom must I engage?

I must engage with other experts in the field which I am working, however the most important population to engage with is the stakeholders who will ultimately be the end user/beneficiary.

4. What kinds of challenges, opportunities, and approaches should I care about?

I should care about the social impact of the project and an essential challenge/opportunity that I must care about is creating a system which is sustainable instead of just developing a technology/practice and throwing it at the stakeholders and expect them not only to use it, but to also develop their own system. An approach I should care about is using local sources and integrating them into the system. This provides legitimacy that I am trying to do good with the stakeholders, and the locals are much more knowledgable than I could ever be.

5. What might my epitaph read?

“Pain and challenges in life are a present and not a burden. They are the most transformative events one can experience, and proper understanding and response only positively influences one for the better.”

Blog #4

 

1. *Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like? 

My design process is heavy in the area of empathy. By nature I care deeply about others and I find the most important step in the process is empathizing and truly understanding the struggle of those who I want to help. Too often a problem is said to be a problem for someone who really doesn’t see it as such. This leads to ineffective, unnecessary “solutions”. Additionally, approaching the process as such insights that make the remainder of the process much easier. Such an example of this is prototyping. In many cases, the prototype is made then brought to the end user and problems are identified and then the prototype is altered. By incorporating the stakeholder from the start much of these issues are mitigated.

2. *Identify your three most important stakeholders and list five UNIQUE attributes for each one of them. 

Mothers→ low income, located in rural areas of Sierra Leone, price sensitivity goes up during the wet season, Religions: Islam and Christianity, low education level 

World Hope International→ Organization, Core Values: Transformation, Sustainability, Empowerment, and Collaboration, Christian, Motive: “To empower the poorest of the poor around the world so they can become agents of change within their communities.” (https://www.worldhope.org/about-us/), some staff members located in the U.S. and Makeni, Sierra Leone

The ordinary citizen of Sierra Leone: this is a key stakeholder because of the importance of mothers in the Sierra Leone household. Attributes include: dependence on the mother’s contribution to the household, personal interest/stake in the life of each mother, ability to encourage/support the mother throughout their pregnancy, influence on the mother’s mental well-being, and the motivation they may provide the mothers to seek better health when they think about how their health (the mother’s health) affects the whole family unit.

 

3. *Identify three ways in which you will validate your project concept, technology, usability, and business model.

Validate Business Model→ Does it solve a real burning problem? Yes, Sierra Leone has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world.  A lot of women go untested for UTI and preeclampsia which can lead to birth complications. Competitive advantages over other ventures? Strong community connections on the ground, incredibly important for distributing and gaining trust from CHWs. How do they solve the problem now? Currently people in rural areas of Sierra Leone visit Community Health Posts (CHPs) to receive basic medical care, however they are normally not screened by any diagnostic test due to lack of resources.  

Validate Usability→ How does it compare to the user experience of alternative

Approaches? 9 parameter UTI test strip→ much more expensive, more complicated with 9 vs the 3 our strip has (color scheme harder to analyze). How easy/difficult is it for each stakeholder to interact with the product? CHWs are shown how to use it and read the results during training. Will people use your product? Already have UHWs purchasing and using the test strips.

 

4. Give three examples of something very interesting you learned from a friend that was a completely alien concept to          you.

1: Fraternities

• Call people you barely know “brothers”
• Unique power dynamic
• Only common factor between all is that you are the part of the same organization
• Pseudo-religious rituals

 

2: Halal Foods

• Inability to eat certain foods due to the method of slaughter
• Concept that restaurants designate themselves as Halal and consumers can only trust that it is true
• Massive impact on day to day diet of many people

 

3: Video Games

• Interact with people through voice and virtual characters without seeing them face to face
• Relationships are more about the interactions of two characters with personalities than anything else
• Sitting in front of computer for hours inside
• Create new persona totally independent of any other aspect of life

Blog #3

List the top 20 questions your team needs to answer to advance the venture forward. Categorize the questions if necessary.

1. Who are the people we are seeking to impact?
2. How is the impact distributed across different groups?
3. How does Ukweli’s success in Sierra Leone impact the international system?
4. Why do we care about making an impact?
5. How is this realistically translated into their lives?
6. How can our model be applied to similar countries?
7. How is our impact measured?
8. How does this venture empower women?
9. What type of connections do we need to branch out of the Bombali District?
10. What is the future of this venture?
11. What are the challenges that we are encountering on the ground right now?
12. How do we leverage our existing social network to expand operations?
13. What are other ways we can strengthen the CHW network within our control?
14. How can we organize data in a way that is easy to understand and accessible?
15. What is some data we already have?
16. What is some data we still need to collect?
17. What are some realistic ways we can quantify the success of our project? (e.g. comparing maternal mortality rates in Ukweli vs. non-Ukweli tested mothers and the challenges associated with timely data collection)
18. How could additional funding assist in our efforts?
19. How can we construct a reliable and sustainable chain of communication with UHW?
20. Are there more effective methods to increase accountability/oversight?

 

Develop and Visualize the Theory of Change (Logic Model) for your venture. 

 

Inputs	Outputs	Outcomes
Money/operations funding Partnerships w/ health workers + World Hope	# of women tested positive # of women tested in general  # of UHWs trained # of boxes bought by UHWs The maternal mortality rate of women tested vs not tested	*Lower maternal mortality rate alongside tangible data Establish a network outside of our current base of operations Start mobilizing Ukweli beyond Bombali district

 

SPRING GOALS

• Bylaws on the roles/responsibilities of UHWs: Zach 
• Organize a data collection method that creates an easy way to compile relevant data in a way that can be easily presentable: Spencer, Noah, Anneke
• Establish a chain of communication with Ukweli Certified Health Workers via WhatsApp: Skyler
• E4C Systems approach article: Zach 
• Proposals/abstracts submitted to IEEE
• IRB approvals finalized/submitted/approved for US and Sierra Leone: Rohan
• Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• Submission of Grants to external funding sources: Anneke
• Presentation of quality control outcomes of test strips: Rohan
• Implementation of PHU Data collection books
• Create database of each form to observe trends and running total of # of CHWs trained, amount of strips sold, $ which has been invested

 

SUMMER GOALS

• Finalization of IEEE Paper 
  • Idea: discussing leveraging the existing social network and the outreach of CHWs and associated training successes/pitfalls in the process
• Implementation of By-Laws to the UHWs by Hassan
• Submission of grants to external funding sources: Anneke 
• Implementation of PHU Data collection books 
• Establish connections/possible operations outside our current realm of operations (Bombali District)
• Initiating the proposed chain of communication with the UHW
• Utilize data from the fieldwork to generate more marketing to support project, specifically $ / lives saved (culmination of other data = number of positive tests, referrals given out)