EHP II Activities

Selection: Policy Report and Meetings, Partnerships, and Operations Research

EHP reviewed data collected to assess the progress of and suggest next steps for a four year old collaboration between private soap companies in Central America and USAID (through EHP and the BASICS project) to promote handwashing for diarrheal disease prevention in soap company advertisements.

Performance monitoring is at the center of EHP's evidence-based planning and management and addresses needs internal to the project and those of USAID: meeting internal needs includes monitoring and evaluating of the project as a whole and its two major program areas (Community-Based Environmental Sanitation and Hygiene � CESH � and Environmental Change and Health Outcomes � ECHO); meeting USAID needs includes improving the validity and reliability of existing water, sanitation, and hygiene indicators.

Through internal and external technical meetings, EHP captures lessons learned from its experience and keeps USAID up to date on the project's progress.

Through participation and sponsorship of international meetings and other collaborative and information-sharing activities, USAID reaches out to partners at the local, national, regional, and international level to influence the environmental health agenda and increase the demand for and public health impact of environmental health activities; to date USAID has co-sponsored (with WHO) a global technical consultation on the health impacts of indoor air pollution in developing countries (May 2000) and has supported EHP consultants attending a conference in Lucknow, India,(November 2000) on respiratory diseases and the environment.

With the assistance of a working group of technical experts on malaria, EHP has developed an operations research agenda and proposed indicators of success to examine the potential for community-based malaria vector management for prevention of malaria in developing countries, particularly in urban areas.

USAID is in the preparatory stage of an effort to develop and apply tools for promoting sanitation as national policy in developing countries to address high rates of sickness and death from diarrheal disease - the major health hazard of poor sanitation conditions; preparatory activities include creation of strategic partnerships between USAID and other external support agencies and the identification of needs for sanitation policy tools, especially those that promote the integration of hygiene behavior change in sanitation.

An applied research program in community-based approaches for diarrheal disease prevention is in the planning stages.