LASER PULSE Project Applies Embedded Research Translation Toward Air Pollution in Vietnam

A LASER PULSE Project is employing the Embedded Research Translation (ERT) model to effectively plan for scale and impact. The Avoid the TRAP is a multi-sector collaboration among health, education, and environment representations to minimize the impact of traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) on children in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. At the project kick-off meeting last October, the team went over its extensive research translation plan. The plan features activities, expected outputs, partner roles, stakeholders involved, and timelines across its work in the four pillars of the ERT model, Partnership, Process, Product, and Dissemination. This planning enables the team to systematically plan for and showcase their strategy for research translation

To plan for implementation, they first defined the audiences of the project by considering who would benefit from the research findings. From the exercise, the team derived a number of specific audiences within various schools, government agencies, NGOs, media outlets, and the private sector. They then crafted key messages for audiences, for instance, to promote community engagement in protecting school children from high exposure to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP). From this information, they created formats and channels to share the most suitable content with the desired audience.

This impacted planning for dissemination by specifically allowing the project to target activities such as workshops and trainings for broader uptake, by reaching influential stakeholders like government agencies and family doctor networks. Efforts to distribute project products like information briefs and guidelines will be able to reach broader communities toward effectively managing air contamination collaboratively.

We encourage other projects to develop plans similar to this to more deliberately guide their research translation work.

Led by the Grant and Innovation Centre, University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City, the Avoid the TRAP project seeks to solve and reduce impacts from air pollution problems through work taking place between 2022-2023. Objectives include (1) to establish an innovative monitoring network for air quality around school areas, including the monitoring of individual exposure, (2) to determine actual levels of TRAP exposure and potential links with respiratory health outcomes among school children, and (3) to develop and implement effective approaches to disseminate the information about TRAP and the best practice to reduce the exposure thereof, including advocacy for sustainable changes in TRAP through behavior and policy changes.