Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

SMART-H is the first step towards establishing SMART (e.g., resilient, sustainable, and green) Health-care facilities in Malawi and ensure continuity of operations of critical services before, during and after disasters and health crises to promote better community health and provide better services for patients and staff. A novel roadmap for stakeholders will be implemented to assess the adequacy of existing healthcare facilities and establish the selection criteria to identify those facilities eligible for mitigation strategies. It will provide an informed pathway on how government, business and society should intervene to prepare medical facilities to meet global standards and respond to disruptive events. The novel concept of this research consists of creating an integrated analysis framework to i) assess multi-hazards by probabilistic analyses, ii) identify medical baselines (e.g., health-care building types with similar structural and architectural features) on a variety of parameters collected through field investigations, iii) develop dynamic structural and thermal models to assess the physical and energy performance, and estimate direct and indirect losses and health and wellbeing of people associated with disasters driven by climate change for prioritising vulnerable baselines, iv) recommend mitigation strategies and optimize them using life-cycle approaches to reduce CO2 and improve energy efficiency, and v) produce cost-benefit analyses to plan mitigation investments for reducing future impact from multi-hazard-risks and health crises. This work will deliver a dataset, which will encourage stakeholders to take risk-informed and inclusive decisions at local, regional, and national level and promote medical facility renovations. The results will demonstrate that multi-disciplinary research is crucial to prioritise the extent and nature of repair of medical facilities. Depending on the policymakers' primary concerns different pathways should be considered to improve multi-hazard preparedness and response to health emergencies and disasters. To maximise the impact of the proposed research, a workshop in Malawi will be delivered to illustrate the potential of the proposed strategies amongst policy makers and industries operating in health emergency planning and response. This will create additional drive across sectors for financial initiatives and alternatives for inclusive healthcare. Dissemination of the research will be through publications in high profile journals and key conferences in this field.

This project seeks to understand the barriers that have prevented the large-scale uptake of improved cook stoves in Southern Africa. By learning from successful projects in East Africa, a roadmap to overcome these obstacles will be produced. It is estimated that 2.7 billion people worldwide, who mostly live on incomes of less than US$2/day, depend on solid biomass fuels (fuelwood, charcoal, animal dung, grass, shrubs, agricultural residue) to meet their basic energy needs for cooking and heating. Many of these people cook on open fires, often inside their homes. As well as being very inefficient in the use of scarce firewood, women and children are exposed to harmful levels of wood smoke, which is a major cause of respiratory disease and premature death. Cook stoves are estimated to contribute around a third of global carbon monoxide emissions while the black carbon particles and other pollutants in biomass smoke are also thought to play a role in global warming. Improved cook stoves, designed to burn biomass fuels more cleanly and efficiently than traditional stoves, have been promoted by charities and governments in many developing countries since the 1970s. A variety of approaches have been tried, including "build-your-own stove" projects, community-focused participatory schemes, manufacturing stoves in remote villages and market-based commercial activities. In some countries, these new stoves have been well-received. For example, in Kenya 80% of urban families use a metal "jiko" charcoal stove for cooking, which uses 50% less fuel and also decreases cooking time. The cost of the stove can be recovered in fuel savings in just a few months. It is estimated that the widespread uptake of the jiko stove in Kenya saves 206,000 tonnes of wood (570,000 hectares of trees) per year. In other countries, the progress has been less spectacular. Schemes have failed for a whole range of reasons which are only partially understood. Reasons for failure include: cost of the new stoves, cultural resistance to change, negative experience with previous "development" projects, lack of fuel, failure to understand users' needs and so on. Some stove initiatives have relied solely on the attraction of new technologies rather than taking a more holistic approach which learns from past mistakes and also from successful intervention projects. The proposed research analyses improved cook stoves and their uptake, with a particular focus on South-South learning and knowledge transfer. Countries to be studied include Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in East Africa, and Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa in Southern Africa. A cross-disciplinary approach is required to fully understand the barriers and to create an environment that is required for improved cook stove uptake in Southern Africa. To ensure that the problem is tackled from a variety of viewpoints, project partners include engineers, social scientists, nongovernmental organisations, stove manufacturers and distributors. The full list of project partners is: * The University of Nottingham * Practical Action * The Household Energy Network * AFREPREN: an Africa-wide network of researchers, policy makers & civil society representatives * The Energy, Poverty & Development Group at the Energy Research Centre, Cape Town, South Africa * The Center of Energy & Environment, University of Zambia * Lilongwe University of Agriculture & Natural Resources, Malawi * The Centre for Petroleum, Energy Economics & Law, University of Ibadan, Nigeria * Ashden: a charity championing the use of sustainable energy at a local level The intended outcome of the project will be a set of resources useful to the project partners and other organisations involved in the distribution of improved cook stoves, with the ultimate aim to reduce fuel poverty and to improve the health and environment for the 2.7 billion people who currently depend on biomass stoves.

Mineral Micronutrient Deficiencies (MNDs) are widespread in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). MNDs (a.k.a. hidden hunger) have a major detrimental effect on human health which constrains economic growth and efforts to alleviate poverty. Alleviating MNDs is a major component of the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG2), to "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture", by 2030. This Foundation Award will focus on supporting efforts to reduce MNDs in Ethiopia and Malawi, two countries with widespread mineral nutrient malnutrition problems where dietary mineral intakes fall well below levels required for optimal nutrition. For example, zinc deficiency risks are >40% in both countries which causes high rates of child mortality and stunting. Selenium deficiency risks exceed 75% in Malawi, compromising the healthy functioning of human immune systems. Iron and iodine deficiencies are widespread and are the focus of widespread supplementation and food fortification programmes (i.e. technical 'fixes') in the region. The scientific aim of this Foundation Award is to understand how the spectral properties of tropical African soils relate to plant-availability of minerals in soils and, subsequently, to the transfer of minerals into the edible portions of staple crops and diets, and to population-level biomarkers of optimal mineral status. Achieving this aim will enable the geospatial prediction of plant-available nutrients in soils and in edible crop tissues, and thereby in downstream food systems. Spectral properties have previously been measured on a massive scale by the Africa Soils Information Service (AfSIS) programme, using X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Mid Infra-Red (MIR) spectroscopy. We have previously identified strong links between soil-crop-biomarkers in small-scale cross-sectional studies in Malawi. This aim will be realised through activities in three Themes. In Theme 1, a designed soil and crop sampling programme will be conducted at 500 sites in Ethiopia. Two sets of statistical models will be developed, the first will focus on predicting relationships between total (XRF) and plant-available soil mineral concentrations, using covariate data from MIR, remote sensing and legacy data (e.g. maps) sources. The second set of models will focus on relationships between plant-available soil mineral concentrations and their concentrations in crop edible portions. In Theme 2, these data will be integrated with data from published/government sources to predict dietary mineral supply (and highlight knowledge gaps). These predictions will be tested against mineral biomarker data (e.g. blood, urine) and proxies of micronutrient status (e.g. stunting) from national surveillance programmes. Outputs of Themes 1 and 2 will be delivered in the forms of maps and reports suited to communicating with policy-makers, to include the communication of uncertainty. Maps will be used to highlight those geographical areas that are at highest likely risk of MNDs. The focus of Theme 3 is interactions with policy-makers to optimise communication strategies, and to strengthen networks and capacity to conduct longer-term R&D to address knowledge gaps in the region. We have well-established networks of partners in Ethiopia and Malawi, including academics, high-level policy-makers, NGOs and industry, who will all play active roles to ensure that the Foundation Award delivers genuine impact that will be assessed using robust evaluation procedures.