Effects of a community-driven water, sanitation, and hygiene intervention on diarrhea, child growth, and local institutions: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in rural Democratic Republic of Congo.

Background: Diarrhea and growth faltering in early childhood reduce survival and impair neurodevelopment. We assessed whether a national program combining (i) funds for latrine and water upgrades; (ii) institutional strengthening; and (iii) behavior change campaigns reduced diarrhea and stunting, and strengthened local institutions.

Methods And Findings: We collaborated with program implementers to conduct a cluster-randomized controlled trial in four provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Effects of a community-driven water, sanitation, and hygiene programme on COVID-19 symptoms, vaccine acceptance and non-COVID illnesses: A cluster-randomised controlled trial in rural Democratic Republic of Congo.

Objective: The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) responded to COVID-19 with policy measures, such as business and school closures and distribution of vaccines, which rely on citizen compliance. In other settings, prior experience with effective government programmes has increased compliance with public health measures. We study the effect of a national water, sanitation, and hygiene programme on compliance with COVID-19 policies.

Effects of a community-driven water, sanitation and hygiene intervention on water and sanitation infrastructure, access, behaviour, and governance: a cluster-randomised controlled trial in rural Democratic Republic of Congo.

Introduction: Inadequate water and sanitation is a central challenge in global health. Since 2008, the Democratic Republic of Congo government has implemented a national programme, Healthy Villages and Schools ( (VEA), with support from UNICEF, financed by UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Methods: A cluster-level randomised controlled trial of VEA was implemented throughout 2019 across 332 rural villages, grouped into 50 treatment and 71 control clusters.

The effects of changes in distance to nearest health facility on under-5 mortality and health care utilization in rural Malawi, 1980-1998.

Background: Despite important progress, the burden of under-5 mortality remains unacceptably high, with an estimated 5.3 million deaths in 2018. Lack of access to health care is a major risk factor for under-5 mortality, and distance to health care facilities has been shown to be associated with less access to care in multiple contexts, but few such studies have used a counterfactual approach to produce causal estimates.

Niche width collapse in a resilient top predator following ecosystem fragmentation.

Much research has focused on identifying species that are susceptible to extinction following ecosystem fragmentation, yet even those species that persist in fragmented habitats may have fundamentally different ecological roles than conspecifics in unimpacted areas. Shifts in trophic role induced by fragmentation, especially of abundant top predators, could have transcendent impacts on food web architecture and stability, as well as ecosystem function. Here we use a novel measure of trophic niche width, based on stable isotope ratios, to assess effects of aquatic ecosystem fragmentation on trophic ecology of a resilient, dominant, top predator.