Category Archives: Research

How we should have prepared…

When Dohyeong Kim and I were drafting this paper in December 2019, we had no inkling of the next coronavirus pandemic around the corner. Moral of the story, of course, is be prepared, and that public health needs to be a core function of government!


Kim H, Kim D, Paul CJ, Lee CK. The spatial allocation of hospitals with negative pressure isolation rooms in Korea: are we prepared for new outbreaks? International Journal of Health Policy Management. In Press. doi:10.34172/ijhpm.2020.118

Food Environment of HBCUs

Nice coverage on work I have been part of with Helene Vilme on the food deserts near HBCUs:
https://nicholas.duke.edu/news/study-highlights-need-improve-food-environments-around-ncs-hbcus


Using Geographic Information Systems to Characterize Food Environments Around Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Implications for Nutrition Interventions,” Helene Vilme, Christopher J. Paul, Naomi N. Duke, Santiba D. Campbell, Derrick Sauls, Charles Muiruri, Asheley C. Skinner, Hayden Bosworth, Yussif M. Dokurugu and John P. Fay; Journal of American College Health, June 22, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2020.1767113

Coverage on NPR:

https://www.wunc.org/post/north-carolina-s-hbcu-students-don-t-have-enough-access-healthy-foods?fbclid=IwAR3KRTok1OgVnbnnOoDRpRd9xOg9sCKZi-AYr_d4rphifctBxutR2bcXgJc

Long-lasting mosquito nets work (but kids need better protection)

Pleased to report that Dohyeong Kim and I, along with Gi-geun Yang and Anh Pham, have published another long-churning manuscript, and on that I think is quite valuable in enforcing malaria control programs with the use of nets.

This meta-analysis underscores how hard it is to protect children from malaria (by getting them to sleep under nets). Given that today is my daughters 4th birthday, I know how hard it is to get children under five to sleep in their own beds 🎉😯

http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/3/546

Yang GG, Kim D, Pham A, Paul CJ. 2018. A Meta-Regression Analysis of the Effectiveness of Mosquito Nets for Malaria Control: The Value of Long-Lasting Insecticide Nets. International Journal of Environmental Research in Public Health 15(3):546.

Can Ethiopia be resilient?

In my latest paper, I explore the development of Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Green Economy in the period 2011-2014. Ethiopia, currently is under tremendous political pressure and change, which makes the resilience of its economy and society even more important.

Christopher John Paul & Erika Weinthal (2018) The development of Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Green Economy 2011–2014: implications for rural adaptation, Climate and Development, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2018.1442802

 

Social capital, trust, and adaptation to climate change: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

A key component of my dissertation research has been published in Global Environmental Change in which we find that social capital as measured by trust is indeed associated with increased cooperation, but may however be detrimental to private household-level adaptation.

Here is the abstract: “Climate change is expected to have particularly severe effects on poor agrarian populations. Rural households in developing countries adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change both individually and collectively. Empirical research has shown that access to capital—financial, human, physical, and social—is critical for building resilience and fostering adaptation to environmental stresses. Little attention, however, has been paid to how social capital generally might facilitate adaptation through trust and cooperation, particularly among rural households and communities. This paper addresses the question of how social capital affects adaptation to climate change by rural households by focusing on the relationship of household and collective adaptation behaviors. A mixed-methods approach allows us to better account for the complexity of social institutions—at the household, community, and government levels—which drive climate adaptation outcomes. We use data from interviews, household surveys, and field experiments conducted in 20 communities with 400 households in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Our results suggest that qualitative measures of trust predict contributions to public goods, a result that is consistent with the theorized role of social capital in collective action. Yet qualitative trust is negatively related to private household-level adaptation behaviors, which raises the possibility that social capital may, paradoxically, be detrimental to private adaptation. Policymakers should account for the potential difference in public and private adaptation behaviors in relation to trust and social capital when designing interventions for climate adaptation.”

Data replication materials (Stata .do and .dta) are available.

Barriers in malaria policymaking: stakeholder perspectives vs. academic research

In my recent publication, Identifying barriers in the malaria control policymaking process in East Africa: insights from stakeholders and a structured literature review” in BMC Public Health, my coauthors and I combine fieldwork with stakeholders and qualitative analysis of the scientific literature. As part of a large multi-faceted research program on malaria policy led by Randy Kramer, in this paper we specifically explore the barriers in the policy process to achieving effective malaria control. We identify certain points in the policy process (as shown the in figure) when barriers prevent advancement of malaria control policy. We then contrast the concerns of stakeholders (e.g. politics; access to research; access to funds) with the focus of the academic literature (technical challenges; health systems). This paper represents an effort for stakeholder driven research and tools, and notes the importance for bridging academic research with policymaking.

Barriers in the Policy Cycle

Reference:

Paul CJ, Kramer RA, Lesser A, Mutero CM, Miranda ML, Dickinson K. 2015. Identifying barriers in the malaria control policymaking process in East Africa: insights from stakeholders and a structured literature review. BMC Public Health 15(1): 862.

Indoor environmental health in Seoul

I’m very pleased to continue to collaborate with my colleagues from the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative, including a new publication with Dohyeong Kim on environmental health and allergic diseases in Seoul. I’ve been part of the research, now I just need to visit!

Seo S, Kim D, Paul CJ, Yoo Y, Choung J. 2014. Exploring household-level risk factors for self-reported prevalence of allergic diseases among low-income households in Seoul, Korea. Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Research, forthcoming.

http://e-aair.org/index.php?body=ForthcomingArticles-201409
http://e-aair.org/Synapse/Data/PDFData/9999AAIR/aair-6-e256.pdf