Asher Rosinger

Pennsylvania State University | Penn State · Department of Biobehavioral Health and Department of Anthropology

Body water homeostasis is critical for optimal physiological and cognitive function for humans. The majority of research has illustrated the negative biological consequences of failing to meet water needs. The human body has several mechanisms for detecting, regulating, and correcting body water deficits and excesses. However, variation exists in t...

Water is imperative for nutrition and health, economic productivity, and political stability; it also holds cultural and symbolic meanings and functions. Household water insecurity is an emerging construct that captures lived experiences with water access, use, and acceptability. Although the plausibility of household water insecurity to “get under...

Water salinity is a growing global environmental health concern. However, little is known about the relation between water salinity and chronic health outcomes in non-coastal, lean populations. Daasanach pastoralists living in northern Kenya, traditionally rely on milk, yet are experiencing socioecological changes and have expressed concerns about...

Water is critical to health and wellbeing. Studies have theorized that problems with water can become embodied, yet few studies have quantified this. Therefore, we first sought to understand the lowland Bolivian water environment of Tsimane’ forager-horticulturalists. We assessed the water environment holistically, using objective measures of water...

Background: In the US, problems with the provision of safe, affordable water have resulted in an increasing number of adults who avoid their tap water, which may indicate underlying water insecurity. Dietary recalls provide critical nutritional surveillance data yet have been underexplored as a water insecurity monitoring tool. Objectives: This...

An increasing number of studies find that water sharing—the non-market transfer of privately held water between households—is a ubiquitous informal practice around the world and a primary way that households respond to water insecurity. Yet, a key question about household water sharing remains: is water sharing a viable path that can help advance h...

Objectives In subsistence populations, high physical activity is typically maintained throughout pregnancy. Market integration shifts activity patterns to resemble industrialized populations, with more time allocated to sedentary behavior. Daasanach semi‐nomadic pastoralists living in northern Kenya face lifestyle heterogeneity due to the emergence...

Access to safe water is vital for community health, especially during disaster and recovery periods when standard solutions may be slow or politically stalled. Water sharing, an informal and self-guided coping mechanism, becomes critical during disasters when standard water infrastructure is damaged or destroyed. Drawing on diverse literature, we h...

Maintaining adequate hydration over the course of pregnancy is critical for maternal and fetal health and reducing risks for adverse pregnancy outcomes (e.g., preeclampsia, low placental and amniotic fluid volume). Recent evidence suggests that women may be at risk for under-hydration in the second and third trimesters when water needs begin to inc...

Knowing what happens over time to the lifeways of people in contemporary small-scale non-industrial societies of the rural Global South matters because it helps assess changes in the quality of life of underrepresented groups. It has been hard to answer the question because longitudinal information is rarely collected in such settings. A longitudin...

Background Pastoralists live in challenging environments, which may be accompanied by unique activity, energy, and water requirements. Aim Few studies have examined whether the demands of pastoralism contribute to differences in total energy expenditure (TEE) and water turnover (WT) compared to other lifestyles. Subjects and methods Accelerometer...

Objective Hydration status and water intake are critical to physiological health. Despite a popular narrative that dehydration impairs cognitive performance, results are mixed in the literature. Therefore, we tested how hydration status was associated with cognitive performance in an ad libitum state over the course of 3 months. Methods Data come...

Background and objectives Non-communicable disease (NCD) risk and the epidemic of cardiometabolic diseases continue to grow across the expanding industrialized world. Probing the relationships between evolved human physiology and modern socioecological condition is central to understanding this health crisis. Therefore, we investigated the relation...

We extend the conceptualization of the social and health burdens of household water insecurity on children beyond the traditional narrow lens of microbiological pathogens and diarrhea. The global burden of disease associated with water insecurity has traditionally focused on diarrheal disease as the most significant driver of infant and child morta...

Water links the environment, culture, and biology. An integrative approach is needed to attain a complete picture of how water affects human biology due to its inherent interdisciplinary nature. First, this review describes advances in human water needs, thirst, and hydration strategies from a biocultural perspective. Second, it provides a critical...

Compounding systems of marginalization differentiate and shape water-related risks. Yet, quantitative water security scholarship rarely assesses such risks through intersectionality, a paradigm that conceptualizes and examines racial, gendered, class, and other oppressions as interdependent. Using an intersectionality approach, we analyze the relat...

Purpose: Suboptimal hydration has been linked to a variety of adverse health outcomes. Few studies have examined the impact of hydration status on immune function, a plausible physiological mechanism underlying these associations. Therefore, we tested how variation in hydration status was associated with circulating pro-inflammatory cytokine levels...

Objectives: Investigations of early childhood growth among small-scale populations are essential for understanding human life history variation and enhancing the ability to serve such communities through global public health initiatives. This study characterizes early childhood growth trajectories and identifies differences in growth patterns rela...

Extreme climatic events are increasing in frequency, leading to hotter temperatures, flooding, droughts, severe storms, and rising oceans. This special issue brings together a collection of seven articles that describe the impacts of extreme climatic events on a diverse set of human biology and health outcomes. The first two articles cover extreme...

This article quantifies Daasanach water insecurity experiences in northern Kenya, examines how water insecurity is associated with water borrowing and psychosocial stress, and evaluates if water borrowing mitigates the stress from water insecurity. Of 133 households interviewed in seven communities, 94.0% were water insecure and 74.4% borrowed wate...

Objectives: Flooding is the most frequent extreme-weather disaster and disproportionately burdens marginalized populations. This article examines how food and water insecurity, blood pressure (BP), nutritional status, and diarrheal and respiratory illnesses changed during the 2 months following a historic flood in lowland Bolivia. Methods: Drawi...

Objective Water plays a critical role in the production of food and preparation of nutritious meals, yet few studies have examined the relationship between water and food insecurity. The primary objective of this study, therefore, was to examine how experiences of household water insecurity (HWI) relate to experiences of household food insecurity (...

Water security requires not only sufficient availability of and access to safe and acceptable quality for domestic uses, but also fair distribution within and across populations. However, a key research gap remains in understanding water security inequality and its dynamics, which in turn creates an impediment to tracking progress towards sustainab...

Background Food insecurity has profound nutritional and public health consequences. Water insecurity may exacerbate food insecurity, yet little is known about the association between water and food insecurity in the US or other high-income countries. Objective This study aimed to 1) estimate how tap water avoidance, a proxy of water insecurity, co...

Household water insecurity (HWI) can have far‐reaching consequences for human health and well‐being, yet little is known about how environmental seasonality contributes to HWI variation. Using a systematic literature review, we examined the following questions: (1) How does environmental seasonality affect HWI? and (2) How do the effects vary over...

Water has always been a driver of human mobility, migration, and displacement. But water is increasingly central to explaining environmental migration in the context of climate change. Most studies of the relationship between water and environmental migration are framed around punctuated, extreme weather events and disasters that either limit agric...

Purpose: Water needs increase during pregnancy, and proper hydration is critical for maternal and fetal health. This study characterized weekly hydration status changes throughout pregnancy and examined change in response to a randomized, behavioral intervention. An exploratory analysis tested how underhydration during pregnancy was associated wit...

Anthropological theories of reciprocity suggest it enhances prestige, social solidarity, and material security. Yet, some ethnographic cases suggest that water sharing-a form of reciprocity newly gaining scholarly attention-might work in the opposite way, increasing conflict and emotional distress. Using cross-cultural survey data from twenty globa...

This article quantifies Daasanach water insecurity experiences in Northern Kenya, examines how water insecurity is associated with water borrowing and psychosocial stress, and evaluates if water borrowing mitigates the stress from water insecurity. Of 133 households interviewed in 7 communities, 95% were water insecure and 74.4% borrowed water thre...

Household water insecurity (HWI) can have far-reaching consequences on human health and well-being, yet little is known about how environmental seasonality contributes to HWI variation. Using a systematic literature review, we answered the following questions: (1) How does environmental seasonality affect HWI? and (2) How do those effects vary over...

Objectives To assess the association between sugar from sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and untreated decay in permanent teeth and calculate the cost burden of sugar from SSBs on untreated decay in US adults. Methods Cross-sectional data from the 2013–2014 and 2015–2016 cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were...

Objectives: Thirst is an evolved central homeostatic feedback system that helps regulate body water for survival. Little research has examined how early development and exposure to extreme environments and water availability affect thirst perception, particularly outside Western settings. Therefore, we compared two indicators of perceived thirst (...

Household survey data from 27 sites in 22 countries were collected in 2017–2018 in order to construct and validate a cross-cultural household-level water insecurity scale. The resultant Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) scale presents a useful tool for monitoring and evaluating water interventions as a complement to traditional metrics...

Climate change is now considered a primary global driver of migration, with water insecurity theorized to be a key determinant. Most studies have focused on large-scale climate migration events triggered by extreme weather events such as droughts, storms, or floods. But there are few studies of how climate change, interacting with background social...

Objective As tap water distrust has grown in the US with greater levels among Black and Hispanic households, we aimed to examine recent trends in not drinking tap water including the period covering the US Flint Water Crisis and racial/ethnic disparities in these trends. Design Cross-sectional analysis. We used log-binomial regressions and margina...

We evaluated nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT) for Zika virus on whole-blood specimens compared with NAAT on serum and urine specimens among asymptomatic pregnant women during the 2015-2016 Puerto Rico Zika outbreak. Using NAAT, more infections were detected in serum and urine than in whole blood specimens.

Objectives This study examined how household food insecurity (HFI) and chronic stress relate to adiposity among Tsimane’ hunter‐forager‐horticulturalists in remote Bolivia with limited access to energy‐dense processed foods that promote weight gain among industrialized populations. Methods Retrospective cross‐sectional data on HFI (via the Househo...

Water security is a powerful concept that is still in its early days in the field of nutrition. Given the prevalence and severity of water issues and the many interconnections between water and nutrition, we argue that water security deserves attention commensurate with its importance to human nutrition and health. To this end, we first give a brie...

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a set of public guidelines for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevention measures that highlighted handwashing, physical distancing, and household cleaning. These health behaviors are severely compromised in parts of the world that lack secure water supplies, particularly in low- and mi...

Understanding factors contributing to variation in ‘biological age’ is essential to understanding variation in susceptibility to disease and functional decline. One factor that could accelerate biological aging in women is reproduction. Pregnancy is characterized by extensive, energetically-costly changes across numerous physiological systems. Thes...

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We sought to determine whether a shortened version of the 12-item Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale, which measures water insecurity equivalently in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), is valid for broad use. Using data from 9,261 households in 25 LMICs, subsets of candidate items were evaluated on their predictive accuracy...

Purpose Risks of dehydration and cognitive decline increase with advancing age, yet the relation between dehydration, water intake, and cognitive performance among older adults remains understudied. Methods Using data from the 2011–2014 cycles of the Nutrition and Health Examination Survey (NHANES), we tested if calculated serum osmolarity (Sosm)...

Water problems due to scarcity, inaccessibility, or poor quality are a major barrier to household functioning, livelihood, and health globally. Household-to-household water borrowing has been posited as a strategy to alleviate unmet water needs. However, the prevalence and predictors of this practice have not been systematically examined. Therefore...

Despite evidence that tap water is often safer and cheaper than alternative sources, tap water is avoided when perceived to be unsafe. Therefore, we conducted the first nationally representative U.S. trends analysis of in‐home tap water avoidance between 2007 and 2016. We tested whether changes occurred during/after the Flint water crisis, and whet...

Objectives This study compared the prevalence of concentrated urine (urine specific gravity ≥1.021), an indicator of hypohydration, across Tsimane' hunter‐forager‐horticulturalists living in hot‐humid lowland Bolivia and Daasanach agropastoralists living in hot‐arid Northern Kenya. It tested the hypotheses that household water and food insecurity w...

Self-identified race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) contribute to disparities in several health domains, although research on their effects on women’s reproductive function has largely focused on links between SES and age of menarche. Here, we assessed whether race/ethnicity, SES, and downstream correlates of SES such as food security and...

Increases in reproductive hormones like estrogen, play an important role in the remarkable increases in plasma volume observed in pregnancy. Accurate estimates of plasma volume expansion during pregnancy depend on correctly timing and measuring plasma volume in nonpregnant women. However, to date, there is no consensus on the pattern of plasma volu...

Since the agricultural revolution, traditional fermented beers served social and dietary functions, including hydration. There are longstanding customs of producing, consuming, and socializing with home-made beers. However, because they are time- and labour-intensive to produce, shifts away from traditional beers often occur with the introduction o...

Billions of people globally, living with various degrees of water insecurity, obtain their household and drinking water from diverse sources that can absorb a disproportionate amount of a household's income. In theory, there are income and expenditure thresholds associated with effective mitigation of household water insecurity, but there is little...

Water connects the environment, culture, and biology, yet only recently has it emerged as a major focus for research in human biology. To facilitate such research, we describe methods to measure biological, environmental, and perceptual indicators of human water needs. This toolkit provides an overview of methods for assessing different dimensions...

Objective Progress towards equitable and sufficient water has primarily been measured by population-level data on water availability. However, higher-resolution measures of water accessibility, adequacy, reliability and safety (ie, water insecurity) are needed to understand how problems with water impact health and well-being. Therefore, we develop...

Objectives: Food and water insecurity have both been demonstrated as acute and chronic stressors and undermine human health and development. A basic untested proposition is that they chronically coexist, and that household water insecurity is a fundamental driver of household food insecurity. Methods: We provide a preliminary assessment of their...

Objective: This study examined changes in body fat and diet among Tsimane' forager-horticulturalists and assessed how dietary shifts relate to increases in adiposity between 2002 and 2010. Methods: Longitudinal anthropometric and household-level dietary recall data from 365 men and 339 women aged ≥20 years in the Tsimane' Amazonian Panel Study w...

Objectives: To examine changes in plasma volume, hydration, and micronutrient concentrations across the menstrual cycle among healthy women of reproductive age. Methods: Healthy women aged 18 to 44 years were studied longitudinally across a single menstrual cycle (n = 35). Women made three visits (v1, v2, and v3) to the study center around cycle...

Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) add empty calories to children’s diets¹ and may increase the risk of weight gain, obesity, and diabetes.² Substituting water for SSBs may reduce total energy intake.³ Furthermore, school-based interventions to displace SSBs by increasing water access were associated with decreased body mass index.⁴ However, how wate...

Despite a growing number of publicly available datasets, the use of these datasets for secondary analyses in human biology is less common compared with other fields. Secondary analysis of existing data offers an opportunity for human biologists to ask unique questions through an evolutionary and biocultural lens, allowing for an analysis of cultura...

Water sharing between households could crucially mitigate short‐term household water shortages, yet it is a vastly understudied phenomenon. Here we use comparative survey data from eight sites in seven sub‐Saharan African countries (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda) to answer three questions: Wit...

Objectives Evidence from industrialized populations suggests that urine concentrating ability declines with age. However, lifestyle factors including episodic protein intake and low hypertension may help explain differences between populations. Whether this age‐related decline occurs among small‐scale populations with active lifestyles and non‐West...

Introduction A wide range of water-related problems contribute to the global burden of disease. Despite the many plausible consequences for health and well-being, there is no validated tool to measure individual- or household-level water insecurity equivalently across varying cultural and ecological settings. Accordingly, we are developing the Hous...

Water insecurity massively undermines health, especially among impoverished and marginalized communities. Emerging evidence shows that household-to-household water sharing is a widespread coping strategy in vulnerable communities. Sharing can buffer households from the deleterious health effects that typically accompany seasonal shortages, interrup...

Study Objectives Short and long sleep duration are linked to reduced kidney function, but little research has examined how sleep is associated with hydration status. Our aim was to assess the relationship between sleep duration and urinary hydration biomarkers among adults in a cross-cultural context. Methods Three samples of adults aged 20y were...

Water sharing offers insight into the everyday and, at times, invisible ties that bind people and households with water and to one another. Water sharing can take many forms, including so‐called “pure gifts,” balanced exchanges, and negative reciprocity. In this study, we examine water sharing between households as a culturally embedded practice th...

Objective Differences in bottled v. tap water intake may provide insights into health disparities, like risk of dental caries and inadequate hydration. We examined differences in plain, tap and bottled water consumption among US adults by sociodemographic characteristics. Design Cross-sectional analysis. We used 24 h dietary recall data to test di...

Pregnant women living in or traveling to areas with local mosquito-borne Zika virus transmission are at risk for Zika virus infection, which can lead to severe fetal and infant brain abnormalities and microcephaly (1). In February 2016, CDC recommended 1) routine testing for Zika virus infection of asymptomatic pregnant women living in areas with o...

Key findings: Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey •Almost two-thirds of boys and girls consumed at least one sugar-sweetened beverage on a given day. •Boys consumed an average 164 kilocalories (kcal) from sugar-sweetened beverages, which contributed 7.3% of total daily caloric intake. Girls consumed an average 121 kcal f...

Key findings: Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey •Approximately one-half of U.S. adults consumed at least one sugar-sweetened beverage on a given day. •Men consumed an average 179 kilocalories (kcal) from sugar-sweetened beverages, which contributed 6.9% of total daily caloric intake. Women consumed an average 113 kcal...

Total cholesterol (TC) levels, triglyceride levels, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels are linked to coronary heart disease.¹ Between 1999 and 2010, mean TC, triglycerides, and LDL-C levels declined in the United States, regardless of cholesterol-lowering medication use.² We used 2013/2014 National Health and Nutrition Examinati...

Background: Adequate water intake is critical to physiologic and cognitive functioning. Although water requirements increase with body size, it remains unclear whether weight status modifies the relation between water intake and hydration status. Objective: We examined how the association between water intake and urine osmolality, which is a hydr...

What is already known about this topic? Zika virus transmission in Puerto Rico has been increasing since it was first detected in November 2015. Zika virus infection is a cause of microcephaly and other severe birth defects and has been associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome and severe thrombocytopenia. What is added by this report? During Novembe...

Zika virus is a cause of microcephaly and brain abnormalities (1), and it is the first known mosquito-borne infection to cause congenital anomalies in humans. The establishment of a comprehensive surveillance system to monitor pregnant women with Zika virus infection will provide data to further elucidate the full range of potential outcomes for fe...

Key findings: Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2009-2012 •Among U.S. adults, men consumed an average of 3.46 liters (117 ounces) of water per day, and women consumed 2.75 liters (93 ounces) per day. •Men aged 60 and over consumed less water (2.92 liters) than men aged 20-39 (3.61 liters) and 40-59 (3.63 liters). Simi...

Hydration status is critical to physiological and cognitive health, yet it is unclear how populations living in hot-humid environments experiencing lifestyle transitions manage this underexplored facet of heat adaptation. This study assesses the predictors of repeated measures of hydration status for adults from two villages (close and distant from...