Collaborative Research: Multiscalar Approaches to Understanding Syndemic Water Insecurity

水不安全与粮食和卫生不安全相互作用，影响心理、情绪和身体健康。尽管有大量证据证明了这些关系，但这些影响如何在多个测量和领域中表现出来仍未得到解决。对定性生活经验的调查和对健康和福祉结果的定量评估将提高对解决资源不安全问题的不同方法的效用的理解，同时为跨生活领域的资源不安全的含义提供全面的见解。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，响应了对全球卫生挑战采取多管齐下和跨学科方法的呼吁。这项研究对学生进行了培训，并与政策分析人员、发展实践者和努力应对国内资源不安全挑战的学者直接相关。本研究的目的是：(1)从民族志上考察面临慢性但不同程度水资源短缺的人口的水不安全生活经验；(2)比较水不安全的客观和主观指标，了解这些因素在构建心理-情绪和身体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共同的压力源，还是相互增强的压力源，导致负面健康结果；(4)综合政治生态学和症候理论，扩大对复杂社会和健康现象的理解和测量。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不安全与水不安全之间关系的理解，并通过综合评估卫生条件和健康结果，使人们更好地了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。

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.