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November 2025 Swetland Seminar || Sociodemographic Composition and Barriers to Advancements in Water Treatment in U.S. Community Water Systems
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Sociodemographic Composition and Barriers to Advancements in Water Treatment in U.S. Community Water Systems
Presenter: Jahred Liddie, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Water, Health & Opportunity Lab
Milken Institute School of Public Health
George Washington University
Website: https://jmliddie.scholars.harvard.edu/
Studies situated in the US have documented unequal access to safe drinking water and associations between elevated drinking water contamination and adverse health outcomes. However, the underlying data are often analyzed at non-ideal spatial scales, rendering it difficult to interpret and compare findings. Recently released data from the US Environmental Protection Agency offer valuable opportunities to develop nationwide estimates of sociodemographic composition for community water systems (CWS) at the preferred spatial scale, known as the service area boundary. In this talk, I will discuss geospatial approaches to estimate the sociodemographic composition of over 44,000 CWS service area boundaries nationwide. Data quality assessments indicate these approaches estimate total populations well. They hold promise for both improving the available resolution of drinking water quality data for communities in the US and standardizing drinking water quality research that use geospatial data. Next, I’ll discuss the use of these estimates in an ongoing study to investigate sociodemographic disparities in the adoption of advancements to water treatment processes among CWS nationwide. Finally, the talk will zoom out and discuss improvements to the harmonization and accessibility of US drinking water data for researchers and the public.