TY - JOUR
T1 - Trials and tribulations of conducting interventional studies in urban slums of a developing country
T2 - Experiences from Kolkata, India
AU - Mahapatra, Tanmay
AU - Mahapatra, Sanchita
AU - Pal, Debottam
AU - Saha, Jayanta
AU - Lopez, Anna Lena
AU - Ali, Mohammad
AU - Bannerjee, Barnali
AU - Manna, Byomkesh
AU - Sur, Dipika
AU - Bhattacharya, Sujit
AU - Kanungo, Suman
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Tanmay Mahapatra, Sanchita Mahapatra, Debottam Pal, Jayanta Saha, AnnaLena Lopez, Mohammad Ali, Barnali Bannerjee, Byomkesh Manna, Dipika Sur, Sujit Bhattacharya, and Suman Kanungo.
PY - 2016/1/1
Y1 - 2016/1/1
N2 - Experimental studies involving human subjects provide most internally valid evidences in epidemiological research due to their robust methodology. While conducting populationbased interventional studies, to achieve external validity, inclusion of information from vulnerable groups like urban slum-dwellers of the developing world, in the epidemiological estimates is of paramount importance. The challenges faced while conducting 2 consecutive large-scale, community-based vaccine trials in urban slums of Kolkata, India are presented in this article. Interventions in these communities often get constrained by issues pertaining to human rights and benefits, socio-cultural factors, political environment, methodological shortcomings in addition to the challenges in ensuring community participation. While conducting these trials although we intermittently faced obstacles, by virtue of having a long term and robust surveillance system and developing a trusted relationship between the researchers, community leaders and residents we were able to come up with a commendable community participation which culminated into the success of the interventions. Bridging the gap between research and field operations by incorporating knowledge gathered from interventional studies and making strategies to improve health conditions of these informal settlers is a major unfulfilled agenda. We believe the lessons learnt during our research will help researchers while developing efficient interventions in similar setting.
AB - Experimental studies involving human subjects provide most internally valid evidences in epidemiological research due to their robust methodology. While conducting populationbased interventional studies, to achieve external validity, inclusion of information from vulnerable groups like urban slum-dwellers of the developing world, in the epidemiological estimates is of paramount importance. The challenges faced while conducting 2 consecutive large-scale, community-based vaccine trials in urban slums of Kolkata, India are presented in this article. Interventions in these communities often get constrained by issues pertaining to human rights and benefits, socio-cultural factors, political environment, methodological shortcomings in addition to the challenges in ensuring community participation. While conducting these trials although we intermittently faced obstacles, by virtue of having a long term and robust surveillance system and developing a trusted relationship between the researchers, community leaders and residents we were able to come up with a commendable community participation which culminated into the success of the interventions. Bridging the gap between research and field operations by incorporating knowledge gathered from interventional studies and making strategies to improve health conditions of these informal settlers is a major unfulfilled agenda. We believe the lessons learnt during our research will help researchers while developing efficient interventions in similar setting.
KW - Conducting vaccine trials
KW - Lessons from interventional studies
KW - Randomized control trial
KW - Trials and tribulations
KW - Urban slums
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84961836150&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84961836150&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/21645515.2015.1066052
DO - 10.1080/21645515.2015.1066052
M3 - Comment/debate
C2 - 26224251
AN - SCOPUS:84961836150
SN - 2164-5515
VL - 12
SP - 182
EP - 186
JO - Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics
JF - Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics
IS - 1
ER -