Using longitudinal survey and sensor data to understand the social and ecological determinants of clean fuels use and discontinuance in rural Ghana

Efforts to reduce the health and ecological burdens of household biomass combustion are underway in Ghana, principally by promoting clean cookstoves and fuels. Recent studies have focused on the sustained use of clean cookstoves, but sometimes household adopt a new cookstove and then end use of that stove. In this study, we introduce a novel framework for understanding and encouraging household transitions to cleaner cooking: clean fuel discontinuance. We leveraged data from the Ghana Randomized Air Pollution and Health Study (GRAPHS) (N = 1412) where pregnant women received either improved biomass (BioLite) or dual burner LPG stoves for free. LPG users were given free LPG refills during GRAPHS. Weekly questionnaires were administered. Stove use monitors tracked a sub-cohort (n = 220) 6 months before and after the fuel subsidy. We examined social and ecological determinants of stove use and discontinuance. Overall intervention stove use adherence was high throughout GRAPHS, with self-reported use at 69% and 86% of participant-weeks for BioLite and LPG arms respectively. Participants used intervention stoves less for meals requiring vigorous stirring. Burns from intervention stoves decreased use among BioLite (RR: 0.96, p = 0.009), but not LPG users. Device breakage was mentioned as an impediment in 18% of free-text responses for LPG users and 1% for BioLite. Tree canopy within a spatial buffer—a plausible proxy for biomass fuels access—was the only variable explaining LPG discontinued stove use in adjusted Cox time-to-event analyses (HR = −0.56, p < 0.001). Future studies should consider the stove use discontinuance framework.