title: Improving environmental sanitation, health, and well-being: a conceptual framework for integral interventions.
abstract: We introduce a conceptual framework for improving health and environmental sanitation in urban and peri-urban areas using an approach combining health, ecological, and socioeconomic and cultural assessments. The framework takes into account the three main components: i) health status, ii) physical environment, and iii) socioeconomic and cultural environment. Information on each of these three components can be obtained by using standard disciplinary methods and an innovative combination of these methods. In this way, analyses lead to extended characterization of health, ecological, and social risks while allowing the comprehensive identification of critical control points (CCPs) in relation to biomedical, epidemiological, ecological, and socioeconomic and cultural factors. The proposed concept complements the conventional CCP approach by including an actor perspective that considers vulnerability to risk and patterns of resilience. Interventions deriving from the comprehensive analysis consider biomedical, engineering, and social science perspectives, or a combination of them. By this way, the proposed framework jointly addresses health and environmental sanitation improvements, and recovery and reuse of natural resources. Moreover, interventions encompass not only technical solutions but also behavioral, social, and institutional changes which are derived from the identified resilience patterns. The interventions are assessed with regards to their potential to eliminate or reduce specific risk factors and vulnerability, enhance health status, and assure equity. The framework is conceptualized and validated for the context of urban and peri-urban settings in developing countries focusing on waste, such as excreta, wastewater, and solid waste, their influence on food quality, and their related pathogens, nutrients, and chemical pollutants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel, Switzerland. hung.nguyen@unibas.ch
authors.forename: Hung
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nguyen-Viet
authors.forename: Jakob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zinsstag
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schertenleib
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zurbrügg
authors.forename: Brigit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Obrist
authors.forename: Agnès
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Montangero
authors.forename: Narong
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Surkinkul
authors.forename: Doulaye
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Koné
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Morel
authors.forename: Guéladio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cissé
authors.forename: Thammarat
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Koottatep
authors.forename: Bassirou
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bonfoh
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tanner
mesh_terms: D054521:Cultural Competency; D017753:Ecosystem; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D012499:Sanitation; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014504:Urban Health