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2023 News

December

Sera Young at COP28

WISE and Climate Change at COP28

December 11, 2023

WISE data were featured in a session at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Pavilion at COP28 in Dubai entitled “If climate change is a shark, water is its teeth: How water insecurity data can mobilize action.” The session is available to view here.

October

food market

World Water Week Theme: World Food Day

October 4, 2023

Water is the theme of World Food Day this year. The value of experiential measures of water for understanding and mitigating food insecurity and poor nutrition is being highlighted in a number of ways, including a webinar hosted by Nature Water.

September

August

Nature Logo

Nature Highlights the WISE Scales

August 1, 2023

In their series highlighting progress towards SDGs, the journal Nature featured the utility of the WISE Scales as a policy tool, along with some of the ways it is being used by communities around the world to measure water insecurity.

July

image of JMP report

JMP Report Features IWISE Data

July 19, 2023

In their global report focusing on gender, the JMP called out IWISE data for their ability to reveal disparities unmeasured by household-level indicators.

webinar screenshot

Webinars Explore the Connection Between Mental Health, Food and Water Insecurity, and Climate Change

July 12, 2023

In July, the WISE Scales were featured in two webinars about the pathways between water security, climate change, and mental health hosted by the University on New South Wales and others. Watch part one and part two, to learn about how climate change and water insecurity go hand in hand, directly impacting mental health.

Image of the Nuevo government with Sera Young

Government of Nuevo León Signs Commitment to Collaborate with WISE-LAC Network

July 4, 2023

On July 4, 2023 five members of the Water Insecurity Experiences Network of Latin America and the Caribbean (WISE-LAC) were invited to the Palace of the Governor of Nuevo León to sign a commitment to join the WISE-LAC network and ameliorate water insecurity in their state. The government of Nuevo León demonstrates their role as a thought leader in the measurement and mitigation of water insecurity by adding the HWISE to their routine household surveys of social programs.

June

INSP logo

INSP Validates the HWISE Scale

June 7, 2023

Researchers at Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health (INSP) led a paper validating the HWISE scale in Mexico, based on data from the large National Health and Nutrition Survey (ENSANUT).

April

Sera Young

Sera Young Speaks at Foreign Policy Summit

April 26, 2023

Sera Young spoke at the Foreign Policy Climate Summit about her research on water insecurity. "I would argue that water insecurity has been invisible for a long time because we haven't been measuring it at the level of the human," she said.

Conference attendees

Thought Leaders Gather in Mexico City to Discuss Water and Food Insecurity

April 21, 2023
On April 21 and 22, 2023, Northwestern University hosted a key regional meeting in Mexico City in partnership with Universidad Iberoamericana and Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health to develop a consensus around measurements of food and water insecurity.

March

February

Sera Young speaking

WISE Scales Go to Australia

February 20, 2023

The WISE scales are making an appearance in Australia. Community groups are using the WISE Scales to measure disparities in water insecurity within Australia, and at the Next Water Australia meeting there was great interest in using the scales throughout the country.

cup of water

Food and Water Insecurity

February 15, 2023
The connections between experiences with water and food insecurity are now being recognized in the U.S. as well as globally. “We need to build a bridge between those two disciplines," Sera Young said in a recent article that ran in Mother Jones. The only way to truly understand water insecurity, she explained, is to consider people’s lived experiences as clinicians have learned to do with food access.

January

Food and Agriculture Logo of the UN

Study Demonstrates the Link Between Water Insecurity and Food Insecurity

January 16, 2023
In a 25-country study with FAO, Young and her colleagues demonstrate that experiencing water insecurity is associated with a two to three times greater odds of being moderately-to-severely food insecure. This means that if we care about food security, we must pay attention to water security.