Measuring transformative WASH
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Academic
Measuring transformative WASH: A new paradigm for evaluating water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions
Abstract
Progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6, clean water and sanitation for all, is behind schedule and faces substantial financial challenges. Rigorous water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions have underperformed, casting doubt on their efficacy and potentially undermining confidence in WASH funding and investments. But these interventions have leaned on a narrow set of WASH indicators—linear growth and diarrhea—that reflect a 20th-century prioritization of microbiological water quality as the most important measurement of WASH intervention success. Even when water is microbiologically safe, hundreds of millions of people face harassment, assault, injury, poisoning, anxiety, exhaustion, depression, social exclusion, discrimination, subjugation, hunger, debt, or work, school, or family care absenteeism when retrieving or consuming household water. Measures of WASH intervention success should incorporate these impacts to reinforce the WASH value proposition. We present a way forward for implementing a monitoring and evaluation paradigm shift that can help achieve transformative WASH.
This article is categorized under:
- Engineering Water > Water, Health, and Sanitation
- Human Water > Value of Water
- Human Water > Methods
Graphical Abstract
Hypothetical logic model of a WASH intervention with examples of human-centered impacts beyond microbiological indicators.
Taxonomy
- Water Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH)
- WASH in remote communities