FRESH AIR has demonstrated positive impacts in the local communities involved and generated new knowledge on how to implement interventions aimed at the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of NLCDs. Through FRESH AIR, we gained knowledge on the local beliefs and perceptions of NLCDs and established stakeholder engagement. These aspects have proven to be vital to effectively tailor and implement evidence-based interventions aimed at NLCDs, such as Very Brief Advice (VBA) and Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR). We furthermore learned how to raise awareness on Household Air Pollution (HAP) and tobacco smoking, and translated this knowledge into effective (mass media) campaigns that educated professionals and community members on the risks of HAP and tobacco smoking. Moreover, programs incorpoorating a teach-the-teacher approach were developed and implemented successfully, such as an HAP and tobacco smoke awareness raising program aimed at midwives. We also gained insight into the health economic consequences of NLCDs, and for instance learned that absenteeism might not be a good measure to determine the impact of NLCDs on work productivity in low resource settings.
Some key results from the FRESH AIR project include:
- Work Productivity: Chronic lung disease has an under-researched, socioeconomic impact- people may not take time of from work but are less productive.
- Asthma diagnosis & treatment: If infectious disease is highly prevalent, asthma is often unknown to health care workers and its diagnosis is missed.
- Readiness for change is high: communities want to improve the quality of the air they breath.
- Teach the teacher approaches work: Evidence-based education and training can be used to implementation capacity.
- Education and training intervention should include a wide variety of health care professionals and community health workers, not only doctors.
- Pulmonary Rehabilitation sessions can be run affordable and effectively in low resource settings
- Very Brief Advice can be delivered, but challenges remain due to a lack of availability of smoking cessation medication and counselling
- Trust: Implementation research needs to be underpinned with actions that build trust in the process and workforce
In summary, results from FRESH AIR provide data on the context of respiratory health in four different low resource settings including demographic, clinical, environmental, healthcare utilization, quality of life data and direct and indirect costs of diagnosed respiratory patients. We are actively collaborating with other research projects focusing on asthma and COPD to share our learning about stakeholder engagement and how to increase awareness amongst policymakers about non-communicable lung diseases, which tends to be less apparent than for other NCDs Our aim is thus to further disseminate the results of the FRESH AIR project, thereby ensuring FRESH AIR results can make a lasting impact on community members, health care workers and policy makers in low resource settings across the globe.
.
