Session III: July 19th – August 4th
Evaluation of Bednet Usage for Malaria Prevention

Dates listed are the dates in which participates should arrive and depart Accra, Ghana if they are traveling with the group. On these arrival and departure dates, there will be GHEI staff to meet or drop off volunteers at the airport.

Project Description Volunteers will partner with a team of local community members trained in data collection to evaluate bednet usage for the Humjibre community of 4,000. Each team will administer a GHEI-designed questionnaire to a subset of households. Volunteers are responsible for helping to ensure accuracy and recording the data collected from households, as well as entering and managing the data.

Background In Ghana, malaria causes more deaths in children under 5 years than any other disease (Countdown to 2015). Sleeping under an insecticide treated bednet can reduce mortality from any cause by 15-30% in children under age 5 (Phillips-Howard et al, 2003). However, bednet usage rates are generally poor throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

In order to increase usage rates, GHEI worked with local community leaders in 2008 to create an intervention that involved a free bednet distribution with assisted hanging over every sleeping site, an in-home flipchart education and follow-up visits to ensure proper usage. GHEI piloted this intervention in the village of Surano with results showing significant increases in bednet usage (29% to 97% at one year post intervention). Building on the success of this method, GHEI implemented this same intervention in 2010 in its headquarter village, Humjibre, distributing a total of over 2,000 nets with the help of Serve and Learn volunteers.

In 2011, GHEI will conduct a survey to evaluate usage rates approximately 14 months after the full Humjibre distribution.

Qualifications Applicants from all backgrounds and majors are encouraged to apply. No prior research experience is necessary, but a background in public health and/or research would be particularly beneficial for the project.

Time Commitment Volunteers will be expected to dedicate three hours each week for the month preceding departure to gathering resources and organizing activities. There will be two conference calls prior to departure, which all volunteers are required to participate in, to go over both project-specific material and general GHEI Information.

Continued: Session IV: August 6th – August 22nd
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