Bethany Caruso
Asst Professor
Assistant Professor
Faculty, Global Health
Secondary Appointment, Environmental Health
Secondary Appointment, Behavioral/Social/Health Educ
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.
Select recent publications are below.
Please see my Google Scholar page for additional work.
Please find more information about projects and student engagement here.
Areas of Interest
- Adolescent Health/Child Health
- Behavior and Health
- Environmental Health
- Evaluation
- Global Health
- Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
- Women’s Health
Education
- BA 2003, Wesleyan University
- MPH 2009, Emory University
- PhD 2015, Emory University
Courses Taught
- GH 500: Critical Issues in Glob.Health
Affiliations & Activities
Affiliated Faculty Member:
-Environmental Health Sciences and Global Health and Development PhD Programs.
Jointly Appointed: Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health and the Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences Department.
Publications
- Caruso, Bethany A., Gloria D. Sclar, Parimita Routray, Corey L. Nagel, Fiona Majorin, Steven Sola, William J. Koehne III, and Thomas Clasen, 2022, Effect of a low-cost, behaviour-change intervention on latrine use and safe disposal of child faeces in rural Odisha, India: a cluster-randomised controlled trial., The Lancet Planetary Health, 6, e110-e121.
- Caruso, Bethany A., Amelia Conrad, Madeleine Patrick, Ajilé Owens, Kari Kviten, Olivia Zarella, Hannah Rogers, and Sheela S. Sinharoy. , 2022, Water, Sanitation, and Women’s Empowerment: A systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis., PLoS Water, 1,
- BA Caruso, MC Freeman, 2020, Shared sanitation and the spread of COVID-19: risks and next steps, The Lancet Planetary Health,, 4,
- Caruso, B.A., Sclar, G.D., Routray, P., Majorin, F., Nagel, C., & Clasen, T. , 2019, A cluster-randomised multi-level intervention to increase latrine use and safe disposal of child feces in rural Odisha, India: the Sundara Grama research protocol, BMC Public Health, 19, 322
- Caruso B.A., Sommer, M., Phillips-Howard, P. A. , 2019, All of women’s health needs are worthy of attention, The Lancet, 393, 2119
- Caruso, B. A., & Sinharoy, S. S., 2019, Gender data gaps represent missed opportunities in WASH, The Lancet Global Health, 7, e1617
- Sinharoy, S.S. & Caruso B.A. , 2019, On ‘World Water Day’ and Everyday, Gender Equality and Empowerment Require Attention, The Lancet Planetary Health, ,
- Caruso, B.A., Ellis, A., Sclar, G., Girod, C., Penakalapati, G., Sahin, M., & Cavill, S, 2018, Building qualitative research capacity among teams of interdisciplinary collaborators around the globe: Process and lessons learned from a 14-country e-course, Pedagogy in Health Promotion, ,