Many thanks to Dr. Om P. Kurmi of the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit, University of Oxford for taking the time to respond to questions about his research and thoughts on household air pollution issues. Websites with additional information about his work are: http://www.ckbiobank.org and http://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/research. There is also a bibliography of studies he has authored/co-authored with links to the abstracts or full text.
Briefly describe your current work/research on HAP/cookstoves. 
Currently, I am working as a cardio-respiratory epidemiologist on China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) project. CKB is a blood based prospective study investigating the genetic and environmental causes of number of chronic diseases particularly IHD, Stroke, Chronic Respiratory Diseases, Cancer and Diabetes in over 0.5M participants (http://www.ckbiobank.org). The study is carried out in 10 regions (5 rural and 5 urban) of China (http://www.ckbiobank.org/links). Household air pollution is one of the major risk factor studied in our population, particularly related to chronic respiratory diseases, cancer and cardio-vascular health. The household air pollution data is collected using questionnaire and we are planning to estimate air pollution measurements for all CKB participants based on spatial interpolation, satellite–derived aerosol optical depth (AOD) measurements and land-use regression models. We will be analysing some of the blood based biomarkers related to exposure and chronic conditions.
What do you think are 1 or 2 of the main HAP/cookstove issues?
It is now well established that improved cook stoves (ICS) when well designed are able to reduce the exposure to smoke levels substantially by burning the solid fuel more efficiently. Global Alliance for Clean Cook stoves (http://www.cleancookstoves.org/ ) and other organisations are working tirelessly to be able to provide these ICS to the underprivileged particularly those living in low and medium income countries. However, there are number of issues that need to be addressed to make this program more effective. Firstly, the users need to be educated on the benefits of the ICS and stoves should be designed in such a way that it is easy to use and at the same time should be able to reduce the smoke levels substantially. Secondly, special focus should be given to empower the users in maintaining the sustainability of the stoves in long term without too much economic burden on the users.
Do you have suggestions on changes/additions to IAP Updates that would make it more useful to you? (Add funding page, inventory of IAP research projects, etc.)
I would be interested in adding a section where new-comers are able to interact with professionals both in terms of research and cook-stove programs. It would be good to have something like online mentorship. Alternatively, we could have number of groups where individuals interested in carrying out HAP projects can get some advice by writing an email to a group and the communication is kept open to all members.
