Shared Sanitation Management and the Role of Social Capital: Findings from an Urban Sanitation Intervention in Maputo, Mozambique

Shiras, Tess; Cumming, Oliver; Brown, Joe; Muneme, Becelar; Nala, Rassul; Dreibelbis, Robert

doi:10.3390/ijerph15102222

Submit to this Journal Review for this Journal Edit a Special Issue

Article Menu

...

Open AccessArticle

Shared Sanitation Management and the Role of Social Capital: Findings from an Urban Sanitation Intervention in Maputo, Mozambique

¹,

⁴,

⁵ and

^2,*

Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA

Department of Disease Control, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT, UK

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

⁴

WeConsult, R. Fernando Ganhão, Maputo 1103, Mozambique

⁵

Instituto Nacional de Saúde, Av. Eduardo Mondlane 1008, Maputo 1101, Mozambique

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15(10), 2222; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15102222

Received: 7 September 2018 / Revised: 5 October 2018 / Accepted: 7 October 2018 / Published: 11 October 2018

(This article belongs to the Section Global Health)

View Full-Text Download PDF Citation Export

Abstract

Shared sanitation—sanitation facilities shared by multiple households—is increasingly common in rapidly growing urban areas in low-income countries. However, shared sanitation facilities are often poorly maintained, dissuading regular use and potentially increasing disease risk. In a series of focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, we explored the determinants of shared sanitation management within the context of a larger-scale health impact evaluation of an improved, shared sanitation facility in Maputo, Mozambique. We identified a range of formal management practices users developed to maintain shared sanitation facilities, and found that management strategies were associated with perceived latrine quality. However—even within an intervention context—many users reported that there was no formal system for management of sanitation facilities at the compound level. Social capital played a critical role in the success of both formal and informal management strategies, and low social capital was associated with collective action failure. Shared sanitation facilities should consider ways to support social capital within target communities and identify simple, replicable behavior change models that are not dependent on complex social processes. View Full-Text

Keywords: sanitation; shared sanitation; collective action; social capital; urban

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Supplementary Material

Supplementary File 1:
PDF-Document (PDF, 117 KiB)

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Shiras, T.; Cumming, O.; Brown, J.; Muneme, B.; Nala, R.; Dreibelbis, R. Shared Sanitation Management and the Role of Social Capital: Findings from an Urban Sanitation Intervention in Maputo, Mozambique. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15, 2222. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15102222

AMA Style

Shiras T, Cumming O, Brown J, Muneme B, Nala R, Dreibelbis R. Shared Sanitation Management and the Role of Social Capital: Findings from an Urban Sanitation Intervention in Maputo, Mozambique. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2018; 15(10):2222. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15102222

Chicago/Turabian Style

Shiras, Tess, Oliver Cumming, Joe Brown, Becelar Muneme, Rassul Nala, and Robert Dreibelbis. 2018. "Shared Sanitation Management and the Role of Social Capital: Findings from an Urban Sanitation Intervention in Maputo, Mozambique" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15, no. 10: 2222. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15102222

Find Other Styles

Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

Article Metrics

Abstract views Pdf views Html views

Article Menu

Shared Sanitation Management and the Role of Social Capital: Findings from an Urban Sanitation Intervention in Maputo, Mozambique

Abstract

Supplementary Material

Share and Cite

Article Metrics

Article Access Statistics

Article Access Map by Country/Region

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI