Paper short abstract:

The abstract presents about a statistically "not significant" study finding which yet disclosed an important fact about stigma and stigma reduction strategies against an Neglected Tropical Disease known as Podoconiosis.

Paper long abstract:

In 2018, I was in Southern Ethiopia to complete my PhD fieldwork. I wrote a PhD dissertation on podoconiosis, a stigmatized and neglected tropical disease that develops when naturally susceptible individuals walk barefoot in a red clay soil. The overall goal of the study was identifying messages to encourage preventive action and reduce stigmatizing attitudes. To this end, we prepared health messages and conducted a pilot test. We administered a posttest comparison evaluation survey to assess the effectiveness of the training. A Mann-Whitney test showed that the pilot intervention was successful. After the training, I was reading one of the indicators meant to measure stigmatizing attitudes to a teenager. The indicator read us “podoconiosis patients are burden to the community” for which he needed to reply “True” or “False”, for which he replied “very true”. The response didn’t affect the finding of the study as it wasn’t “statistically significant”. I later learned that boy has a podoconiosis patient father who is staying at home due to his disability. As a result, he was forced to discharge all the responsibilities a rural father would expect to do: ploughing, look after the family etc. To perform these, the body had to quit schooling. I realized I was trying to change the attitude of the boy that has been developed based on his lived experience. This panel explains the importance of exploring the everyday lived experiences of patients including processes and practices which cause and mitigate social exclusion to design effective interventions.