Water and Health Working Group

Barbara Evans

Co-chair of the Water and Health working group (for University of Leeds) and Member of Scientific Steering Committee

Professor Barbara Evans holds the chair in Public Health Engineering in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds.  Her research activities centre on sanitation, hygiene and water services in the global south.  Professor Evans’ research includes sanitation in low-income urban communities, rural sanitation and water/sanitation in cities and towns. Within these areas, particular emphasis is placed on the development of effective strategies for management and disposal of faecal sludge, alternatives to conventional water-borne sewerage in dense urban areas, effectiveness of rural sanitation programmes, sustainability and equity in community-wide approaches which eliminate open defecation, health impacts of open defecation practices, technologies and institutions to link community sanitation and water investments with city networks.

Barbara has travelled widely, lived for many years in South Asia, and has worked in over twenty countries.  She is active in the global international development arena and is a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) which reports progress against the Sustainable Development Goals for Water.

Eline Boelee

Co-chair of the Water and Health working group (for Deltares)

Dr Eline Boelee joined Deltares (the Netherlands) in 2017 to strengthen and expand the institute’s research on water, environment and health. She is an all-round interdisciplinary scientist in water-health-ecosystems interlinkages, with twenty five years of experience in health and environmental impacts of water resources development; ecology and environmental control of water-related diseases; multiple use water services; the water-energy-food nexus; water quality; agricultural and domestic water use and management and ecosystem services. Prior to working at Deltares she had her own company Water Health (2012-2016), based in the Netherlands. From 1999 to 2011 Dr Boelee worked at the International Water Management Institute, based in Sri Lanka and Ethiopia. She has a PhD from Wageningen University and has led international multi-disciplinary research projects on improved planning and management of water resources development to enhance health and environmental sustainability in Africa and Asia.

Patrick Moriarty

Member of the Water and Health working group (for IRCwash)

Dr Patrick Moriarty is IRC’s Chief Executive Officer.  A Civil Engineer by first degree and Water Resource Management expert by main experience, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary work on water service delivery and local water governance. Patrick has over twenty years experience of a broad range of issues around water, its management and its use in improving human well-being , predominantly in Africa and South Asia.

Patrick has been with IRC since 2000, and has held several leadership positions; as head of knowledge development; IRC’s country director in Ghana; and Director of one of the IRC’s major projects -Triple-S.

Patrick’s main area of interest is in how IRC can ignite and support sector wide change that brings improved services (and more sustainable water resource use) to all. He finds the most professional satisfaction working in the messy interface between policy, applied research and practice.

Nirmala Ronnie

Member of the Water and Health working group (for Unilever)

Nirmala Ronnie is a Research Scientist at Unilever’s Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC). She specializes in microbiological safety assessment of consumer products and processes. Her research interests include Drinking water treatment, Grey water recycling, Air purification and Antimicrobial resistance development. Nirmala works with International academic experts for developing science capability around these areas. She has lead several research collaborations focussing on development of improved methods for detecting target pathogens, understanding pathogen response to treatments and development of risk-based approaches to evaluate microbiological efficacy and safety of WaSH interventions. She has a master’s degree in Applied Microbiology and has over 20 years of experience working in consumer goods, pharmaceutical industry and academic institutions.

Mark Pascoe

Member of the Water and Health working group (for International Water Centre)

Mark Pascoe has worked for his more than 40-year career in the water industry – predominately in Brisbane, Australia. He spent many years with Brisbane City Council where his most recent position was as the Manager, Water and Sewerage. He was for a brief period the Queensland Operations Manager of Woodward-Clyde Pty Ltd, an environmental engineering consultancy. He left the BCC role to take up the position of Deputy Director, International Water Association in London, which he held for three years before returning to Brisbane.

 

Mark has held positions of President, Australian Water Association; Board Member, Water Services Association of Australia; Board Member, Co-operative Research Centre, Water Quality and Treatment; Board Member, Global Water Research Coalition. More recently he served as a Board Member of the Western Corridor Water Recycled Water Company and the Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence. Mark recently chaired the Queensland Government’s Water Expert Panel.

Mark is the CEO of the International WaterCentre where his role is to lead the development of the business in providing capacity building services to water managers and their organisations and particularly to help develop our future water leaders.

Jamie Bartram

Member of the Water and Health working group (Interim for the Water Institute at UNC)

Dr Jamie Bartram works at the interfaces of water (including sanitation and hygiene) and health – especially the links between science, policy and practice, in both developing and developed countries. His interests include technologies for urban sanitation renewal; management systems for drinking-water safety and rural drinking-water supply; emerging issues (including water scarcity and climate change) and their impacts on system sustainability; health system activities on water and sanitation; and sector capacity issues such as monitoring, the costs and impacts of interventions and effective regulation and financing. Dr Bartram is the author of more than 170 academic papers; author or editor of 49 books and author of more than 50 book chapters.

Dr Jamie Bartram is Don and Jennifer Holzworth Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is the Director of the ‘Water Institute at UNC’.  He was awarded the IWA (International Water Association) ‘Grand Award’ in 2004 and has held Honorary Professorships at the Universities of Aberystwyth, Bristol and Surrey, UK.  Dr Bartram was the first Chair of UN-Water and served for 10 years as coordinator of Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Health at the World Health Organization headquarters where he lead reform of its international monitoring and standard-setting activities and the development of a series of influential communities of practice.