No Health Without Water: Wrapping Up a Year of Fieldwork in Freetown

Brian Waters, a PhD candidate in Geography at York University and a Dahdaleh Global Health Scholar since 2023, has successfully completed the final round of his twelve-month survey on household water insecurity in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The study followed households in three informal settlements, Cockle Bay, Dworzark, and Portee Rokupa, tracking how their access to water changed month to month across the wet and dry seasons. The fieldwork was carried out in partnership with the Federation of Urban and Rural Poor (FedURP), whose community researchers conducted the surveys.

Over twelve months, the team completed 9,600 surveys in total, following the same 680 households every month and surveying all water sources in the three communities every two months. The water source surveys explored how each source is managed and the relationships between source owners and the people who collect water from them. Together, these link what households experience to how water is supplied and governed. This longitudinal design is central to the dissertation, which argues that water insecurity in Freetown follows seasonal cycles and that one-time measurement misses much of what households experience over a year.

Reaching a sample of this size depended on consistent work on the ground. Dahdaleh Institute funding paid for a large part of that groundwork, directly supporting data collection in all three communities. Without it, the study would not have been as robust, and that robustness is critical in Brian’s desire to influence international water policy.

With fieldwork concluded, the next stage is cleaning, analyzing, and writing up the full year of data. Beyond forming the empirical core of the dissertation, the data is intended to inform the next generation of global water targets. As discussion evolves on what follows the Sustainable Development Goals after 2030, this work aims to contribute to improved metrics for the future of SDG6.

Brian Waters thanks the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research for its support of this research. As a Dahdaleh Global Health Scholar since 2023, he has greatly valued the academic and social enrichment of being part of the Institute's community, which has shaped both this project and his broader development as a researcher.

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