Modeling the complexities of water, hygiene, and health in Limpopo Province, South Africa
Open accessAbstract
Researchers have long studied the causes and prevention strategies of poor household water quality and early childhood diarrhea using intervention-control trials. Although the results of such trails can lead to useful information, they do not capture the complexity of this natural/engineered/social system. We report on the development of an agent-based model (ABM) to study such a system in Limpopo, South Africa. The study is based on four years of field data collection to accurately capture essential elements of the communities and their water contamination chain. An extensive analysis of those elements explored behaviors including water collection and treatment frequency as well as biofilm buildup in water storage containers, source water quality, and water container types. Results indicate that interventions must be optimally implemented in order to see significant reductions in early childhood diarrhea (ECD). Household boiling frequency, source water quality, water container type, and the biofilm layer contribution were deemed to have significant impacts on ECD. Furthermore, concurrently implemented highly effective interventions were shown to reduce diarrhea rates to very low levels even when other, less important practices were suboptimal. This technique can be used by a variety of stakeholders when designing interventions to reduce ECD incidences in similar settings.
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Agent-based models have been used to test interventions to enhance neighborhood collective efficacy to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in violent victimization and multicomponent interventions to improve diarrheal disease control.
“enhancing neighborhood collective efficacy to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in violent victimization (Cerda et al., 2014), and multicomponent interventions to improve diarrheal disease control (Mellor et al., 2012)”
From Syndemics: a theory in search of data or data in search of a theory? (2018) · cites this paper as Mellor et al., 2012
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Self-citationModeling the Complexities of Water, Hygiene and Health in Limpopo, South Africa
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- Authors
- Mellor, J. E., Smith, J. A., Learmonth, G. P., Netshandama, V. O., & Dillingham, R. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Virginia (US)
- University of Venda (ZA)
- Corresponding author
- Smith, James A.
- Venue
- Environmental Science & Technology
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2012-12-06
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 24
- Pages
- 13512-13520
- ISSN
- 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
- 1520-5851
- PMC
- PMC3556459
- OpenAlex
- W2073290745
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2022: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 1.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Environmental Science & Technology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- University of Venda
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (K23AI077339)
- Fogarty International Center (R24TW008798, R25TW007518)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Child Nutrition and Water Access
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Fecal contamination and water quality
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Water Resource Management and Quality
- Keywords
- household water quality, agent-based modeling, raw water quality, intervention design, Limpopo Province
- MeSH terms
- Health, Humans, Hygiene, Models, Biological, South Africa, Water, Reproducibility of Results
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