work update from Rwanda...

It has been a while since I have written an update on how the actual research is going for the child survival program (the original reason I came here!). Perhaps now is the time!

You may or may not know this, as I have shared with many of you in person how things are going, but my original research project morphed from a focused study on newborn health into a more broad, "formative"' research project inquiring into cultural and social norms surrounding child health in general. It's a long story how this happened exactly (the morphing of the research project) but the short story is that the World Relief child survival program that I work with is working in partnership with the Rwandan Ministry of Health (MOH), and the MOH needed this formative research project completed. Because I was here this year, already doing research, and because the MOH research encompasses newborn health research, and since the MOH research helps to achieve certain goals of the World Relief child survival program this year, and since it was a great opportunity for me and for the World Relief child survival program, it made a lot of sense to give up the original plan for research and switch to this project. I am so thankful for the way things worked out, actually, and am hopeful that, by working with the MOH, the research results will have a broader impact than originally planned.

Quick background: there is a national strategy here in Rwanda to mobilize health workers at the community level, using volunteers where possible, to help prevent child deaths (particularly deaths caused by preventable disease: malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, and malnutrition). However, the Rwanda MOH wants to have a standardized set of key behavior change messages for community health workers to be able to disseminate to their communities. The Rwandan govt wanted research to be conducted to specifically address the barriers (as well as facilitators) of appropriate health behavior in the rural poor communities (i.e., find out why parents DO take care of their children properly, and why they do NOT....is it ignorance? just pure poverty? traditional beliefs about caring for children? social constraints that prevent prompt care?).

The research I will be conducting will seek to find out what these barriers and facilitators are, here in Rwanda in a rural impoverished setting. Then, using a standard public health behavior change framework, my team and I will be devising key messages to deliver to these rural poor communities that will be targeted to fit the social and cultural norms, based on the research results. God willing, these messages will be used by the MOH's partner organizations (like World Relief, for example) in future child survival programs.

Thank you for your prayers for this research! I have been planning this for a while now, and there have been some considerable logistical delays, but tomorrow I begin with conducting a training (in French, yikes!) for 24 Rwandan researchers, and then Melene and I will be busy through the middle of August, traveling all over Rwanda, to collect data and then to design the messages.

I would love your prayers that the research team and I would be able to conduct the project ultimately to God's glory (i.e., with excellence, professionalism, kindness, compassion)....and that in the end, children would be positively impacted by the work. Would you also pray that the design of the messages would be very useful, in a practical way, for organizations like World Relief to use in the future here in Rwanda? Thank you so much. :)

I will try to keep you posted on how things go with the research, although I'm not sure what my time constraints will be, nor my email access! But I so appreciate your prayers!!

Also, there is a lot going on with so many of you this summer! Many of you are traveling, some are changing jobs or taking on new responsibilities....others are encountering new challenges (or the same challenges!) of day-to-day life! I am praying for you too and am so thankful for you all. I love getting your emails and would love to hear from you if you have a chance. xo