Abstract:
Water insecurity can be considered a lack of safe, reliable, sufficient, or affordable water for a thriving life. Until recently, most global monitoring of household water insecurity involved measurement of type of water source and location of water source, leaving a yawning gap in our understanding of the experiences of water insecurity. To address this, we developed a cross-cultural scale of water insecurity and deployed it in 29 low-income sites. We found this scale to be associated with stress, food security, and many other outcomes. We now turn our attention to high-income settings and present some preliminary findings from this work.
Bio:
Dr. Amber L. Pearson is an Associate Professor in the CS Mott Department of Public Health at Michigan State University. She holds a B.A. (University of North Texas), M.S. (Western Washington University) and PhD in geography and an MPH in global health (both from the University of Washington). Her research focus is on social justice and the intersections between spatial and social features of neighborhoods that bolster opportunities for a healthy life, often in the face of socioeconomic adversity. Her overall research goal is to inform efforts to improve health and wellbeing while paying careful attention to historical inequalities and environmental justice. She is the principal investigator on the Study of Active Neighborhoods in Detroit (StAND) funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), making use of a natural experiment to measure the health benefits of ecological restoration of urban parks. Dr. Pearson also leads a study on the role of historical structural racism on neighborhood conditions, including toxicants, with implications for modern-day child mental health, recently funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Dr. Pearson serves on the steering committee for the Household Water Insecurity (HWISE) research coordinating network and is key personnel on an NSF-funded national research training program, Water Cubed, which will train a new generation of water scientists at Michigan State University