DISES: Integrating Socio-Economic and Environmental Interventions to Improve Well-Being in Vulnerable Communities

血吸虫病是全球第二大社会经济负担被忽视的热带疾病，由穿透人类皮肤的蜗牛传播的扁形虫引起。它起源于农村社区的水生生态，无视控制努力，加剧贫困，损害儿童的健康和教育进步，因为即使提供药物清除感染，当人类返回有蜗牛出没的水体时，他们很快就会再次感染。一个新确定的解决方案通过在大多数感染发生的社区供水点有针对性地收获水生植被，协同利用社会环境系统的反馈。下一个挑战是如何扩展和维护该解决方案。如果成功的话，这个项目测试的低成本、基于信息的设计可以为全世界类似的贫困-疾病陷阱提供一个基于社区的解决方案的模式。该项目推进学生STEM教育，创建多机构研讨会课程，并开发公开研讨会系列，以提高公众对科学和科学方法的理解。该项目实施随机对照试验和人类受试者现场实验，并纵向收集家庭调查，生态和人类健康数据。其目的是评估关于植被清除的公共卫生和/或私人经济利益的教育是否可以有效地扩大和维持生态上无破坏性的水生植被收获，从而抑制血吸虫病感染，提高农业生产力和农村社区的福祉。该项目还监测这些干预措施是否无意中引起意外的生态或社会溢出效应，以及植被清除的好处是否分配给相对贫困或富裕的家庭，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Schistosomiasis, the second most socioeconomically burdensome neglected tropical disease globally, is caused by snail-transmitted flatworms that penetrate human skin. It originates in the aquatic ecology of rural communities, defies control efforts, reinforces poverty, and damages children’s health and education advancement because even when provided drugs to clear the infections, humans quickly get re-infected when they return to snail-infested waterbodies. A newly identified solution synergistically leverages feedback in socio-environmental systems through targeted aquatic vegetation harvest at community water access points where most infections occur. The next challenge is how to scale and sustain that solution. If successful, the low-cost, information-based design this project tests can provide a model for community-based solutions to similar poverty-disease traps worldwide. The project advances STEM education for students, creates a multi-institution seminar course and develops a public seminar series to improve the public’s understanding of science and the scientific method.This project implements a randomized controlled trial and field experiments with human subjects, coupled with longitudinal collection of household survey, ecological and human health data. The objective is to evaluate whether education on the public health and/or private economic benefits of vegetation removal can effectively scale and sustain ecologically non-disruptive aquatic vegetation harvest and thereby suppress schistosomiasis infection and boost agricultural productivity and well-being in rural communities. The project also monitors whether these interventions inadvertently induce unintended ecological or social spillover effects and whether the benefits of vegetation removal are distributed towards the relatively poor or better-off households.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.