Conducting Environmental Health Research in the Arabian Middle East: Lessons Learned and Opportunities
Journal Article
Yeatts, Karin B.
El-Sadig, Mohamed
Ali, Habiba I.
Al-Maskari, Fatma
Campbell, Alan
Ng, Shu Wen
Reeves, Lisa
Chan, Ronna L.
Davidson, Christopher A.
Funk, William E.
Boundy, Maryanne G.
Leith, David
Popkin, Barry M.
MacDonald Gibson, Jacqueline
Rusyn, Ivan
Olshan, Andrew F.
2012
Environmental Health Perspectives
120
5
632-6
10.1289%2Fehp.1104031
PMC3346772
5196
Background: The Arabian Gulf nations are undergoing rapid economic development, leading to major shifts in both the traditional lifestyle and the environment. While the pace of change is brisk, there is a dearth of environmental health research in this region.
Objective: We describe challenges and successes of conducting an environmental epidemiologic study in the United Arab Emirates, a Gulf Nation in the Middle East, with an interdisciplinary team that includes in-country academic and governmental collaborators as well as U.S. academic collaborators.
Discussion: We present several issues, including study and data collection design, exposure assessment, scheduling and time coordination, quality assurance and quality control, and institutional review board protocols. These topics are considered in a cultural context. Benefits of this research included building linkages among multi-national, interdisciplinary team members; generating data for local environmental decision making; and developing local epidemiologic research capacity. The Middle Eastern culture of hospitality was of large benefit to the project team.
Conclusion: Cultural differences impact multiple aspects of epidemiologic research and should be respectfully addressed. Conducting international population-based environmental research poses many challenges; these challenges can be successfully met with careful planning, cultural knowledge, and flexibility. Lessons learned are applicable to interdisciplinary research all over the world. The research conducted will benefit the environmental and public health agencies of the United Arab Emirates and provide the nation’s leadership with country-specific environmental health data that can be used to protect the public’s health in a rapidly changing environment.
Place, Space, and Health
Population and Environment
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