Measuring Water Insecurity Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean: Local and Global Lessons for Science, Public Health, and Policy

Speakers: Professor Sera Young & Dr Pablo Gaitán Rossi

Sera Young is Professor of Anthropology, a Morton O. Schapiro Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, and the co-Directer for the Center for Water Research at Northwestern University. She has dedicated her career to understanding how women, especially in low-resource settings, cope to preserve their health and that of their families. Professor Young’s current research is focused on quantifying human experiences with problems with water, and unpacking their consequences for nutrition, health, and well-being. To that end, she led a large team in the development of the Water InSecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales, the first globally equivalent way of measuring water access and use (www.WISEscales.org). She has co-authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and been funded by many national and international agencies.

Dr Pablo Gaitán Rossi is Director of the Institute for Research on Development with Equity (EQUIDE) at Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Equity in Health. Member of the World Bank-PAHO-Lancet Regional Health Americas Commission on Primary Health Care and Resilience. Co-coordinator of the Latin American Water Insecurity Network (WISE-LAC). Co-investigator on the Making Water Insecurity Visible project at Northwestern University. Research interests include food and water insecurity, climate change, and mental health, examined through health systems, implementation science, inequities, and social determinants of health.