Supply Considerations for Scaling Up Clean Cooking Fuels for Household Energy in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

Promoting access to clean household cooking energy is an important subject for policy making in low- and middle-income countries, in light of urgent and global efforts to achieve universal energy access by 2030 (Sustainable Development Goal 7). In 2014, the World Health Organization issued "Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Household Fuel Combustion", which recommended a shift to cleaner fuels rather than promotion of technologies that more efficiently combust solid fuels. This study fills an important gap in the literature on transitions to household use of clean cooking energy by reviewing supply chain considerations for clean fuel options in low- and middle-income countries. For the purpose of this study, we consider electricity, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), alcohol fuels, biogas, and compressed biomass pellets burned in high performing gasifier stoves to be clean fuel options. Each of the clean fuels reviewed in this study, as well as the supply of electricity, presents both constraints and opportunities for enhanced production, supply, delivery, and long-term sustainability and scalability in resource-poor settings. These options are reviewed and discussed together with policy and regulatory considerations to help in making these fuel and energy choices available and affordable. Our hope is that researchers, government officials and policy makers, and development agencies and investors will be aided by our comparative analysis of these clean household energy choices.

Collecting standardized urban health indicator data at an individual level for school-aged children living in urban areas: methods from EURO-URHIS 2.

Background: Measuring health and its determinants in urban populations is essential to effectively develop public health policies maximizing health gain within this context. Adolescents are important in this regard given the origins of leading causes of morbidity and mortality develop pre-adulthood. Comprehensive, accurate and comparable information on adolescent urban health indicators from heterogeneous urban contexts is an important challenge. EURO-URHIS 2 aimed to develop standardized tools and methodologies collecting data from adolescents across heterogenous European urban contexts. Questionnaires were developed including (i) comprehensive assessment of urban health indicators from 7 pre-defined domains, (ii) use of previously validated questions from a literature review and other European surveys, (iii) translation/back-translation into European languages and (iv) piloting. Urban area-specific data collection methodologies were established through literature review, consultation and piloting. School-based surveys of 14-16-year olds (400-800 per urban area) were conducted in 13 European countries (33 urban areas). Participation rates were high (80-100%) for students from schools taking part in the surveys from all urban areas, and data quality was generally good (low rates of missing/spoiled data). Overall, 13 850 questionnaires were collected, coded and entered for EURO-URHIS 2. Dissemination included production of urban area health profiles (allowing benchmarking for a number of important public health indicators in young people) and use of visualization tools as part of the EURO-URHIS 2 project. EURO-URHIS 2 has developed standardized survey tools and methodologies for assessing key measures of health and its determinants in adolescents from heterogenous urban contexts and demonstrated the utility of this data to public health practitioners and policy makers.