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最严重、被忽视的热带病，由蜗牛传播的扁虫穿透人体皮肤引起。它起源于农村社区的水生生态，违背了控制努力，加剧了贫困，并损害了儿童的健康和教育进步，因为即使提供了清除感染的药物，当人们回到蜗牛出没的水体时，很快就会再次感染。一项新确定的解决方案通过在感染发生最多的社区取水点有针对性地收获水生植被，协同利用社会环境系统中的反馈。下一个挑战是如何扩展和维持该解决方案。如果成功，这个项目测试的低成本、基于信息的设计可以为世界各地以社区为基础的解决类似贫困-疾病陷阱的方案提供一个模式。该项目为学生推进STEM教育，创建了一个多机构研讨会课程，并开发了一个公众研讨会系列，以提高公众对科学和科学方法的理解。该项目实施了随机对照试验和人类受试者的实地试验，同时纵向收集住户调查、生态和人类健康数据。目的是评估关于清除植被的公共卫生和/或私人经济利益的教育是否能够有效地扩大和维持对生态无害的水生植被收获，从而抑制血吸虫病感染，提高农村社区的农业生产力和福祉。该项目还监测这些干预措施是否会无意中引起意想不到的生态或社会溢出效应，以及清除植被的好处是否分配给相对贫穷或较富裕的家庭。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.