Bethany Caruso is an Assistant Professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She is a social and behavioral scientist with over a decade of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sectoral research experience in low and middle income settings. She employs mixed methods approaches to understand how compromised WASH conditions impact physical and mental health, behavior, education, and empowerment, with a specific focus on girls and women throughout their life course. Dr. Caruso is also interested in how water and sanitation environments can impact the practices and behaviors that women perform because of their sex or are expected to perform because of their gender—including menstrual hygiene, child and infant feeding, and the safe disposal of child feces—and how these behaviors and practices may impact varied health outcomes.
Dr. Caruso’s work includes application of qualitative methods, measurement development, hierarchical modeling approaches, theory-based intervention design, and impact and process evaluation. In her work, she emphasizes translation to policy and practice through public scholarship and engagement with policy-makers. She has led research in Bolivia, India, Kenya, Philippines, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Uganda and has supported research in over a dozen additional countries.
