The Sanitation Learning Hub are facilitating this free webinar to explore how childhood development outcomes can be better supported by sanitation and hygiene stakeholders.
Click here to register for the webinar
It has been a long-standing goal of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) professionals to improve the health and lives of children. The health consequences from insufficient access to WASH are wide reaching and impact a range of diseases, infections and other concerns. It is well accepted that WASH is a critical determinant of child health and development.
However, recent high-profile randomised control and case control studies assessing the impact of basic WASH interventions on child health and development outcomes have showed either mixed results or no effect.
While the results do not undermine the potential impact of WASH on child development, they have led WASH and health professionals to revisit and reconceptualise how WASH might best drive impact on child development. This has led to the emergence of the concept of ‘transformative WASH’, which still needs further defining and understanding.
This webinar will introduce key concepts presented in our latest Frontiers of Sanitation edition produced in collaboration with the Nossal Institute for Global Health. The publication draws on the transformative WASH concept to explore and outline what may be required of WASH implementation stakeholders in efforts to support child development outcomes.
It explores areas beyond hand hygiene to consider food hygiene and broader environmental cleanliness, and beyond human faeces to consider animal faeces.
The Frontiers then discusses what this means for practice and outlines how the WASH sector can improve to support improvements to child development outcomes and in particular opportunities for children to both survive and thrive.
Presenters:
- Alison Macintyre, Nossal Institute, University of Melbourne
- Clare Strachan, Nossal Institute, University of Melbourne
Facilitator: Ruhil Iyer, Sanitation Learning Hub
Presentations will be followed by a facilitated Q&A with webinar participants. The session will be recorded and shared afterwards.
About the presenters
Clare Strachan is a Principal Advisor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health. Clare is cross-sectoral in her approach to global health and has a broad range of experience and interests including health and community systems strengthening, health financing and governance, epidemic preparedness and response, and communicable and non-communicable disease control.
Alison Macintyre is a strong health generalist with a broad range of development practitioner skills in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and gender and inclusion, and a strong understanding of health systems and application of public health approaches. She previously led WaterAid Australia’s strategy, policy, research and programming on the intersection of WASH with human health in the Asia and Pacific regions and WaterAid’s global policy and practice on WASH in healthcare facilities and antimicrobial resistance.
Register for the webinar
