Collaborative Research: Multiscalar Approaches to Understanding Syndemic Water Insecurity

水的不安全与食物和卫生的不安全相互作用，影响心理、情感和身体健康。尽管大量证据证明了这些关系，但这些影响如何在多个衡量标准和领域中表现出来仍未得到解决。对健康和福祉结果的定性生活经验和定量评估的调查将提高对解决资源不安全问题的不同方法的效用的理解，同时提供对不同生活领域的资源不安全意义的全面洞察。该项目结合了人类学、地理学、公共卫生和工程学的理论和方法，并响应了多管齐下和跨学科方法应对全球卫生挑战的呼吁。这项研究对学生进行培训，并与应对国内资源不安全挑战的政策分析师、发展从业者和学者直接相关。这项研究的目的是(1)从民族志角度考察面临长期但不同程度缺水的人口中水不安全的生活经历；(2)比较水不安全的客观和主观衡量标准，以了解这些因素在构建身心健康结果方面的预测能力；(3)评估水不安全、粮食不安全和卫生不安全是否代表共同的或相互增强的压力源，导致负面的健康结果；以及(4)综合政治生态学和共同理论，以扩大对复杂社会和健康现象的理解和衡量。这项研究结合了人种学方法、健康的人体测量评估、家庭用水和粮食不安全的定量测量、社区一级的水文数据、家庭用水检测以确定污染以及政策分析。这项研究将加深对粮食和水不安全之间的关系的理解，并通过一起评估卫生条件和健康结果，这项研究将导致更好地理解多种资源不安全及其下游后果之间的复杂关系。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Water insecurity interacts with food and sanitation insecurity in affecting psycho-emotional and physical health. Although significant evidence attests to these relationships, how these effects manifest across multiple measures and domains remains unresolved. Investigations of both qualitative lived experience and quantitative assessments of health and well-being outcomes will improve understanding of the utility of different methods addressing resource insecurity while providing holistic insights as to meaning of resource insecurity across life domains. This project combines theory and method from anthropology, geography, public health, and engineering and responds to calls for multi-pronged and interdisciplinary approaches to global health challenges. The research trains students and has direct relevance for policy analysts, development practitioners and academics grappling with domestic challenges of resource insecurity. The objectives of this research are to (1) ethnographically examine the lived experience of water insecurity in a population facing chronic, but variable degrees of water shortage; (2) compare objective and subjective measures of water insecurity to understand the predictive capacity of these factors in structuring psycho-emotional and physical health outcomes; (3) assess whether water insecurity, food insecurity, and sanitation insecurity represent syndemic, or mutually enhancing stressors, driving negative health outcomes; and (4) synthesize political ecology and syndemic theory to expand the understanding and measurement of complex social and health phenomena. This research combines ethnographic methods, anthropometric assessments of health, quantitative measures of household water and food insecurity, community-level hydrological data, household water testing to identify contamination, and policy analyses. This study will deepen the understanding of the relationship between food and water insecurity, and by assessing sanitation conditions and health outcomes together, the research will result in a better understanding of the complex relationship between multiple resource insecurities and their downstream consequences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.