The Jeroen Ensink Memorial Prize commemorates the life and work of former Waterlines’ Editorial Board member Dr Jeroen H.J. Ensink who was tragically killed in 2015. Throughout his career, Dr Ensink sought to apply science and research to improve the lives of those who in the twenty-first century still live without access to safe drinking water and sanitation. He pursued this goal via different paths – as a practising public health engineer, as a young field researcher, as a doctoral student, as a senior investigator, and as a teacher and mentor – but always with the same clear and practical focus on solving the problem. Jeroen left behind him an impressive legacy of work and he also left a very personal mark on his many colleagues and friends in the water and sanitation sector.
Launched in 2016, the annual prize is awarded for an original paper submitted to and published in Waterlines in the previous calendar year. A Panel consisting of four members of Waterlines’ Editorial Advisory Board (Clarissa Brocklehurst, Oliver Cumming, Patrick Moriarty and Michael Templeton), together with Jeroen’s brother, Robbert Ensink and his colleague Willem van Schaik, has deliberated over a short-list of eligible papers drawn from all those published in 2020.
The Editorial Advisory Board agreed that the award should go to the authors of the paper which (i) reflects Jeroen’s values, (ii) is of high relevance to practice or policy in the water, sanitation, waste and hygiene sectors in low- and middle-income countries, and (iii) is of high quality.
We are pleased to announce that the winners of this year’s prize are Bonface Okotch, Elsir Gadir Ahmmed Elsimat, Libertad Gonzalez, Jan Heeger, and Jovana Dodos for their paper ‘Are ceramic water filters effective in preventing diarrhoea and acute malnutrition among under-five children in Sudan?’, published in the Vol. 39 No. 2/3 issue. The paper is fully Open Access and free to read and download here.
The authors bring experience from many different settings and locations: Bonface Okotch, Libertad Gonzalez, and Jan Heeger currently work with The Netherlands Red Cross; Elsir Gadir Ahmmed Elsimat works with the Sudanese Red Crescent; and Jovana Dodos is a WASH in Public Health Consultant.
The selection committee felt that the topic (WASH/SAM) is important and operationally relevant (i.e. how targeted WASH interventions might support treatment and prevention of severe acute malnutrition in CMAM settings), and that this study added to the existing literature (Altmann 2018, Doocy 2019) by extending follow-up to 6 months post-CMAM/outpatient SAM treatment. Dr Jeroen Ensink’s own passion was for research as a means to promote better practice rather than solely as an end in itself. Waterlines believes that the prize-winning paper will contribute to that goal.
With warm congratulations to the authors, grateful thanks to the award panel, and good reading to you!
Richard Carter (Waterlines Editors)
Jenny Peebles and Rosanna Denning (Practical Action Publishing)
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