Contextual Awareness, Response and Evaluation: Diabetes in Ghana
Project Summary
The CARE project aims to generate contextual understanding of Type-2 Diabetes (T2D) in urban Ghana (Accra), with a focus on three communities in Central Accra (Ga Mashie (James Town and Ussher Town) and Abogbloshie. All three communities represent lower socioeconomic groups and areas that are densely populated and have a growing double burden of infectious and chronic disease.
Using a total of eight work packages, this project will adopt an interdisciplinary approach to gain contextual understanding of the area, to make recommendations for interventions at a systems level and adapt and test the feasibility of a Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) community mobilisation intervention, to reduce the burden of T2D in Ghana. This is drawing on previous research done in rural Bangladesh which was found to be successful.
The project brings together experts from IGH, the UCL Institute for Advanced Studies, the UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit, the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering, the University of York, the University of Greenwich, the University of Melbourne, the University of Ghana and civil society organisations in Ghana to develop contextual understanding of T2D in urban Accra to identify, adapt and test suitable intervention strategies.
Through an interdisciplinary approach the project will explore the contextual drivers, community and systems perspectives of T2D. It will also describe environmental, economic, health, policy and digital environments relating to T2D. This will lead to the development of context-specific recommendations for intervention and implementation at various levels, eventually testing the feasibility of a PLA community-mobilisation intervention for T2D.