Heat Stress Exposure Among Low-Income Residents in Bangladesh and Evaluation of Indoor Interventions

NCT ID: NCT06979258

Last Updated: 2025-05-18

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 1539 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2025-05-18
• Study Completion Date: 2028-12-31

Brief Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if infrastructure and equipment installed to cool homes reduce adverse health outcomes. The main questions it aims to answer are:

What is the impact of the intervention on indoor heat stress? What is the impact of the intervention on personal exposure to heat stress? What is the impact of the intervention on health outcomes, including heart rate, and heart rate variability, and sleep quality?

Participants will have cooling infrastructure and/or equipment installed in their home; have heat stress sensors installed inside and outside their home and wear personal heat stress monitors; allow some biological functions such as heat rate, heat rate variability, and sleep quality.

Detailed Description

During the last two decades, nearly half a million people died each year from heat-related causes; climate change is expected to exacerbate the burden of adverse health outcomes. Heat stress has been associated with an increase in all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease and mortality, chronic respiratory disease, lower respiratory infection, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and poor mental health. The investigators will to determine personal heat stress of low-income individuals who do not have access to air conditioning, evaluate the effectiveness, acceptability, feasibility, and scalability of building-level cooling strategies to reduce indoor heat stress among vulnerable individuals, and evaluate the impact of these interventions on heart rate. A disproportionate burden of heat-related death and disease is borne by low-income communities because they do not have access to cooling and suffer from comorbidities that exacerbate the adverse impacts of heat stress. South Asia faces the greatest current and predicted loss in disability-adjusted life years due to heat stress, and heat stress is particularly strong in informal settlements. As such, the investigators plan to conduct this study in informal settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The overall hypothesis is that individuals who live in homes with corrugated iron roofs and walls are at elevated risk of heat stress and that it is possible to modify homes to prevent increases in heart rate associated with heat stress, ultimately reducing cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The investigators will evaluate the impact of cooling infrastructure and/or equipment interventions on residents' heart rate (primary outcome), heart rate variability, sleep quality, self-reported thermal comfort, mental health, wellness, fatigue, and indoor thermal conditions (secondary outcomes).

Conditions

Heat Stress

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: SINGLE_GROUP
• Primary Study Purpose: PREVENTION
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Indoor cooling intervention

Households in this arm will receive infrastructure and/or equipment intended to cool the house in the hot season.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Cooling intervention

Intervention Type: OTHER

Infrastructure and/or equipment that cools the house in the hot season

Control

Households in this arm will not receive any intervention

Group Type: NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Interventions

Cooling intervention

Infrastructure and/or equipment that cools the house in the hot season

Intervention Type: OTHER

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• House is located in an informal settlement in an urban area in Bangladesh
• The house has a corrugated iron roof and corrugated iron walls
• The household plans to remain in the house from Feb-Nov

• Lives in an eligible household

Exclusion Criteria

• There is an inhabited structure about the house
• The landlord does not allow the proposed intervention

• Has access to air conditioning in their home or place of work
• Reports they are pregnant
• Has hypertension, as measured by study staff
• Has diabetes, as measured by study staff
• Self-reports cardiovascular disease / chronic cardiac condition
• Self-reports respiratory disease / chronic respiratory condition

• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

NIH

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of California, Berkeley

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Laura H Kwong, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of California, Berkeley

Locations

International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh

Dhaka, , Bangladesh

Countries

Bangladesh

Central Contacts

Laura H Kwong, PhD

Role: CONTACT

lakwong@berkeley.edu

+1-650-332-4667

Facility Contacts

Nuhu Amin, BDS

Role: primary

nuhu.amin@icddrb.org

+8802222277001 ext. 4023

Other Identifiers

1R01ES035910

Identifier Type: NIH

Identifier Source: secondary_id

View Link

2024-08-17719

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id