Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Evidence paper, May 2013. DfID.
This paper was commissioned by the DFID Water and Sanitation and Research and Evidence Division (RED) Teams and undertaken by the DFID-funded Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity (SHARE) research programme consortium.
Specifically, and in line with general aims described above, this WASH Evidence Paper aims to:
- Provide an accessible guide to existing evidence including a conceptual framework for understanding how WASH impacts on health and well-being and a description of methods used for ascertaining the health, economic and social impacts of WASH
- Present the available evidence on the benefits and cost-effectiveness of interventions on WASH
- Identify what we do know and also what we do not know, and assess the robustness of the available evidence relating to the impact of WASH interventions.
- Disaggregate the benefits, where possible, by gender and poverty and the distribution of the global impacts across regions and economic status of countries.
This WASH Evidence Paper does not make specific recommendations on what DFID should or should not do, but instead identifies key lessons for consideration in evidence-based policy-making in the following areas:
1. evidence of impact
2. evidence of what works
3. evidence on cost-effectiveness and value for money
4. remaining knowledge gaps
