Registration
traffic accidents, injuries
CHILDHOOD PNEUMONIA
ClinicalTrials.gov No. NCT03351504Lighting has numerous individual physical and mental health benefits. Illumination from lighting has been shown to reduce injuries via traffic accidents [Household energy intervention trials in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have focused on air pollutant exposure and conventional biological outcomes such as childhood pneumonia incidence, but rarely consider effects on end user’s lived experiences. These experiences, however, are likely an important factor in driving acceptability and uptake of an intervention and may also lead to other important outcomes. By exclusively studying biological or clinical outcomes, health research may fail to identify key psycho-social benefits of interventions that contribute to the holistic health and quality of life in communities. Empirical research is therefore needed across health research, and particularly so in household energy intervention trials, to elucidate the impacts of these interventions on social health.While access to energy is abundant in high-income settings such as the United States because of widespread access to reliable electricity, energy poverty remains pervasive in LMICs [We conducted a qualitative sub-study to investigate the impact of lighting and illumination on psychosocial health and other aspects of participants’ lived experiences. This study was conducted as part of a randomized waitlist-controlled trial in rural Uganda where participants were randomized to receive indoor solar lighting systems provided by a local vendor. Quantitative results from the parent trial have been described previously [