This Week @ Gillings: The Abstract

October 4, 2021

Whether you’re local or global, student or alumni, the Abstract’s weekly news digest will help you stay in the loop with our amazing Gillings School community.

Brown named to The Lancet commission on WaSH and health

Dr. Joe Brown

Dr. Joe Brown

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Joe Brown, PhD, PE, who has been named to The Lancet’s Commission on Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (WaSH) and Health. The aim of the Commission is to reimagine and reconstitute WaSH not only as a central pillar of public health, but also as a pathway to gender equality and social and environmental justice. The work of the Commission will be informed by the latest evidence but will also be grounded in critical reflection on the evolution and priorities of this global sector.

“The public health case for investing in WaSH services is clear and increasingly urgent in the context of climate change, antimicrobial resistance and rapid urban growth,” according to the commission. “Effective WaSH services prevent various infectious diseases and their sequelae, reduce exposure to naturally occurring and synthetic toxic chemicals, and reduce pressure on health care services. Beyond public health, WaSH shapes people’s living conditions and their opportunities, particularly for women and girls.”

The Commission has identified three priorities to address:
  • Assessing the health, social and environmental consequences of slow progress towards universal access to safely managed WaSH services and delineating the scale and distribution of these deficits;
  • Assessing the financial costs of achieving universal access to at least safely managed services, as well as other barriers to progress; and
  • Making concrete recommendations for reform focused on the establishment of national systems that are capable of both professionalized delivery of WaSH services for all and responding to key challenges such as climate change and rapid urbanization.

Read the full announcement.


Whittington publishes new article in Nature Communications

Dr. Dale Whittington

Dr. Dale Whittington

Professor Dale Whittington, PhD, is co-author on a new publication in Nature Communications titled “Collaborative management of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam increases economic benefits and resilience.”

The landscape of water infrastructure in the Nile Basin is changing with the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Although this dam could improve electricity supply in Ethiopia and its neighbors, there is a lack of consensus between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt on the dam operation. In the article, the study team introduces a new modeling framework that simulates the Nile River System and Egypt’s macroeconomy, with dynamic feedbacks between the river system and the macroeconomy.

“Because the two systems ‘coevolve’ throughout multi-year simulations, we term this a ‘coevolutionary’ modeling framework,” the team wrote. “The framework is used to demonstrate that a coordinated operating strategy could allow the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to help meet water demands in Egypt during periods of water scarcity and increase hydropower generation and storage in Ethiopia during high flows.”

The team compared the hydrological and macroeconomic performance of this coordinated strategy to a strategy that resembles a recent draft proposal for the operation of a dam discussed in Washington D.C.

Read the full article online.
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