02/28 Spencer Moros

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

 

 

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