Article Text
Abstract
The Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial is a randomised controlled trial in Guatemala, India, Peru and Rwanda to assess the health impact of a clean cooking intervention in households using solid biomass for cooking. The HAPIN intervention—a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove and 18-month supply of LPG—has significant value in these communities, irrespective of potential health benefits. For control households, it was necessary to develop a compensation strategy that would be comparable across four settings and would address concerns about differential loss to follow-up, fairness and potential effects on household economics. Each site developed slightly different, contextually appropriate compensation packages by combining a set of uniform principles with local community input. In Guatemala, control compensation consists of coupons equivalent to the LPG stove’s value that can be redeemed for the participant’s choice of household items, which could include an LPG stove. In Peru, control households receive several small items during the trial, plus the intervention stove and 1 month of fuel at the trial’s conclusion. Rwandan participants are given small items during the trial and a choice of a solar kit, LPG stove and four fuel refills, or cash equivalent at the end. India is the only setting in which control participants receive the intervention (LPG stove and 18 months of fuel) at the trial’s end while also being compensated for their time during the trial, in accordance with local ethics committee requirements. The approaches presented here could inform compensation strategy development in future multi-country trials.
- randomised controlled trial
- compensation
- ethics
- multi-country trial
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Handling editor Seye Abimbola
Collaborators HAPIN Investigators: Vigneswari Aravindalochanan, Kalpana Balakrishnan, Dana Boyd Barr, Vanessa Burrowes, Devan Campbell, Julia McPeek Campbell, Eduardo Canuz, Adly Castañaza, Howard Chang, William Checkley, Yunyun Chen, Marilú Chiang, Maggie L. Clark, Thomas Clasen, Rachel Craik, Mary Crocker, Victor Davila-Roman, Lisa de la Fuentes, Oscar De Léon, Anaité Diaz, Ephrem Dusabimana, Lisa Elon, Juan Gabriel Espinoza, Irma Sayury Pineda Fuentes, Sarada Garg, Dina Goodman, Savannah Gupton, Megan Hardison, Stella Hartinger, Steven Harvey, Phabiola Herrera, Shakir Hossen, Lindsay Jaacks, Shirin Jabbarzadeh, Michael A. Johnson, Abigail Jones, Katherine Kearns, Miles Kirby, Jacob Kremer, Margaret Laws, Jiawen Liao, Amy Lovvorn, Fiona Majorin, Eric McCollum, John McCracken, Rachel Meyers, J. Jaime Miranda, Erick Mollinedo, Lawrence Moulton, Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay, Luke Naeher, Abidan Nambajimana, Florien Ndagijimana, Azhar Nizam, Jean de Dieu Ntivuguruzwa, Aris Papageorghiou, Jennifer Peel, Ricardo Piedrahita, Ajay Pillarisetti, Naveen Puttaswamy, Elisa Puzzolo, Ashlinn Quinn, Sarah Rajkumar, Usha Ramakrishnan, David Reardon, Ghislaine Rosa, Joshua Rosenthal, P. Barry Ryan, Zoe Sakas, Sankar Sambandam, Jeremy Sarnat, Suzanne Simkovich, Sheela Sinharoy, Kirk R. Smith, Kyle Steenland, Damien Swearing, Gurusamy Thangavel, Lisa Thompson, Ashley Toenjes, Lindsay Underhill, Jean Damascene Uwizeyimana, Viviane Valdes, Amit Verma, Lance Waller, Megan Warnock, Kendra Williams, Bonnie Young
Contributors Ashlinn Quinn: drafted, edited and revised the manuscript. Contributed to development of guidance for compensation packages. Assisted with design of formative research activities and with their interpretation. Contributed to decisions about compensation as a member of the Behavioral and Economics Core (BEC) team of the trial. Kendra Williams: led research activities in Peru. Assisted with leadership of the BEC team for HAPIN within which the decisions related to the issues in the manuscript were made. Edited and revised the manuscript. Lisa M Thompson: co-led research activities in Guatemala. Contributed to decisions about compensation as a member of the BEC team. Edited and revised manuscript. Ghislaine Rosa: led research activities in Rwanda. Contributed to decisions about compensation as a member of the BEC team. Edited and revised the manuscript. Anaité Díaz-Artiga: co-led research activities in Guatemala. Contributed to decisions about compensation as a member of the BEC team. Edited and revised the manuscript. Gurusamy Thangavel: co-led research activities in India. Contributed to decisions about compensation as a member of the BEC team. Edited and revised the manuscript. Kalpana Balakrishnan: co-led research activities in India. Contributed to decisions about compensation as a member of the BEC team. Edited and revised the manuscript. J Jaime Miranda: contributed to development of guidance for compensation packages. Contributed to decisions about compensation as a member of the BEC team. Joshua P Rosenthal: contributed to development of guidance for compensation packages. Contributed to decisions about compensation as a member of the BEC team. Edited and revised the manuscript. Thomas F Clasen: drafted guidance for compensation packages. Oversaw multi-country collaboration. Edited and revised the manuscript. Steven A Harvey: contributed to development of guidance for compensation packages. Provided training on qualitative research methods to in-country teams. Led the BEC team for HAPIN within which the decisions related to the issues in the manuscript were made. Edited and revised the manuscript.
Funding The HAPIN trial is funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (cooperative agreement 1UM1HL134590) in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [OPP1131279].
Competing interests No, there are no competing interests for any author.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.