Access to clean water, safe sanitation, and hygiene is not only a matter of dignity—it is also a cornerstone of essential services, public health rights. Yet unhoused communities across the United States and Mexico face daily, systemic barriers to meeting these most basic human needs.
As climate change intensifies, urban inequality deepens, and housing insecurity increases, addressing the link between water access and public health becomes more urgent than ever before.
Science Talk: Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Access for Unhoused Communities to be held on July 24, from 4:00 to 5:30 Central Time, will explore how homelessness intersects with public health, water infrastructure, and environmental justice.
Participants will gain insights into the structural, legal, and health-related challenges that impact unhoused populations, particularly those along the U.S.–Mexico border. This conversation will also highlight community-based responses and solutions to improve water equity and essential service access.
This free, virtual event will bring together three distinguished experts working at the intersection of homelessness, environmental justice, and essential services public health.
Their insights will help reframe how we understand and implement essential services public health strategies for marginalized and vulnerable urban populations, especially those living without stable shelter or access to basic infrastructure.
Megan Welsh Carroll, Professor at San Diego State University, will explore how policy frameworks that criminalize homelessness and limit access to public facilities and urban infrastructure exacerbate the lack of hygiene, sanitation, and water access for unhoused individuals. Her research sheds light on the institutional barriers that reinforce cycles of displacement and exclusion.
Alhelí Calderón Villareal, Physician and current Assistant Professor in the Public Health Department at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM), will share on-the-ground experiences with communities that have historically been excluded from municipal water systems and have faced the consequences of transboundary environmental degradation. Her work focuses on key populations within these communities, such as individuals experiencing housing instability, deported individuals, and people who use drugs, and emphasizes the power of community-led responses to water injustice.
Paula Stigler Granados, Associate Professor of Environmental Health at San Diego State University, will present research on health disparities, hygiene-related risks, and the long-term consequences of neglecting essential services for unhoused populations, particularly in binational contexts.
Moderated by Samuel Sandoval Solís, Associate Director of the Permanent Forum of Binational Waters and Professor at the University of California Davis, this discussion is part of Science Talks—a bilingual series that offers open-access, research-driven conversations on water, equity, and sustainability. All previous Science Talks are recorded and available for viewing on the PFBW YouTube channel.
The session will be held in English, with live interpretation into Spanish.
Participation is free and open to the public.
Be part of this important conversation on July 24: Zoom link