Today we began conducting interviews for Cervical Cancer Research. Samara, Matt, Noah, and Grace arrived at the World Hope International Makeni Field Office and met with the translator, Suiluman. The consent form, demographic survey, and interview guide was discussed so Suiluman was better informed about what and why we are asking such questions. The team walked to a nearby village where the mock interviews began. The purpose of the mock interviews was for each interviewer to practice their interview style, ascertain which questions needed to be reworded, and probing questions that could be useful for deeper insights within a semi-structured interview. Each member conducted two interviews– the first set of four interviews was within one community, and the second set of four interviews were conducted further down the road within another neighboring community. 

Once the interviews were complete, we walked back to World Hope to work with Suiluman and transcribe the interviews verbatim. Individually, each member worked with Suiluman to translate and transcribe two interviews each. This was a very time-consuming process that we will collectively work on in order to improve the efficiency of transcribing. Once the interviews were transcribed, they were analyzed and placed into an Nvivo where cross tabulation can be performed. 

A beautiful sight within one of the communities

Hassan, our distribution manager, arrived to World Hope and had discussed how he went about his onboarding and training processes throughout the day. Today, Hassan focused on Class A pharmacies and conducted a training at a previously onboarded PHU. His week will be filled in regards to training and onboarding.

Tomorrow, two translators will be joining the team and we will be conducting a total of ~200 interviews in a variety of communities and/or villages within Makeni. We also have our teammate, Kayla Miller, joining us in Sierra Leone tomorrow!