This Frontiers of Sanitation 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. The Frontiers explores the multiple ways in which inadequate sanitation, hygiene, and environmental cleanliness can affect physical and cognitive development in children.
It explores areas beyond hand hygiene to consider food hygiene and broader environmental cleanliness, and beyond human faeces to consider animal faeces. What this means for practice is then discussed to outline how the WASH sector can improve current practice to best support improvements to child development outcomes and in particular opportunities for children to both survive and thrive.
Watch the authors present their findings in this webinar
Recommendations:
1. Underpin all programmes with gender, inclusion, and rights approaches
2. Ground responses in local contexts
3. Expand the traditional WASH package
4. Area wide and systems focus for WASH implementation
5. Extend WASH programmes to include other settings
6. Use health data to inform WASH programming
7. Coordinate with and integrate into health, nutrition, ECD, and
education programmes
8. Complex, adaptive behaviour change strategies
9. Conduct basic and implementation research
