We are excited to be hosting our 3rd WaSH Cluster Seminar Speaker! Join us Thursday, Mar. 7, 2019 at 8:30AM in Mann Hall, Room 321 for a talk from Dr. John Colford (Prof. of Epidemiology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health). Don’t forget to register for the WaSH Mix and Match Networking Event later that day!
WASH Benefits: Large-scale, cluster randomized trials in Bangladesh and Kenya to evaluate the health impacts of water, sanitation, hygiene and nutrition interventions in young children.
Abstract: Diarrhea and growth faltering in early childhood are associated with subsequent adverse outcomes. Dr. John Colford will discuss the results and implications of the WASH Benefits trials. These trials aimed to assess whether water quality, sanitation, and handwashing interventions delivered alone or combined with nutrition interventions reduced diarrhea or growth faltering. The studies were large, complex, cluster-randomized trials which enrolled pregnant women and evaluated outcomes in their children at age 1 and 2 years in Bangladesh (n=5,551 children in 720 clusters) and in Kenya (n= 8,246 children in 702 clusters). The trials were guided by the WASH Benefits team and coordinated at UC Berkeley to align their design and analysis as closely as possible with each other; the fieldwork was managed separately in each country by independent investigators and field teams. In Bangladesh the nutrition-containing arms modestly improved linear growth, but there was no additive benefit from the integration of water, sanitation, and handwashing with nutrition. In Kenya the WASH-only interventions did not reduce diarrhea nor improve growth. The implications of the WASH Benefits findings for the design of large-scale WASH and nutrition programs are currently under active discussion by researchers from several universities, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the WASH Benefits team.