Val Curtis BSc MSc PhD

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Background

Val is Director of the Hygiene Centre, a multidisciplinary group dedicated to improving hygiene, sanitation and water in households and schools through enhancing knowledge. She is trained in engineering, epidemiology and anthropology and has a particular interest in human behaviour, especially from an evolutionary perspective.

Val is a member of the Board of Management of School, the Audit Committee and the Voluntary Fundraising Board.

Teaching

Val organises the Study Module on the Design of Disease Control Programmes in Developing Countries. She teaches on the Tropical Environmental Health Study Module and is DrPH Coordinator for the Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases.

You can view her 2006 Public Health Lecture on Disgust, Disease and Desire at

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/streaming/phls_09_10_06/curtis.mov

Research

After coordinating a major study of diarrhoeal disease and a trial of the effectiveness of hygiene promotion in Burkina Faso she studied hygiene behaviour in developing countries for many years. She is currently researching the health impacts of handwashing, the effectiveness of different approaches, including consumer marketing, in changing hygiene behaviour, sanitation marketing, and Darwinian approaches to Health Promotion. The evolution and function of disgust and its relationship to hygiene is a particular area of interest. She helped found and is one of the leaders of the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap and is director of the Hygiene Centre at the LSHTM.

Selected publications

• Curtis, V.A.; Dirt, disgust and disease: a natural history of hygiene. J Epidemiol Community Health, 2007; 61(8):660-4
• Curtis, V.A.; Garbrah-Aidoo, N.; Scott, B.; Masters of Marketing: Bringing Private Sector Skills to Public Health Partnerships. Am J Public Health, 2007; 97(4):634-41
• Curtis, V.; Aunger, R.; Rabie, T.; Evidence that disgust evolved to protect from risk of disease. Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci , 2004; 271 Suppl 4 :S131-3
• Curtis, V.; Cairncross, S. Effect of washing hands with soap on diarrhoea risk in the community: a systematic review Lancet Infect Dis, 2003; 3(5):275-81
• Curtis, V.; Biran, A.; Deverell, K.; Hughes, C.; Bellamy, K.; Drasar, B. Hygiene in the home: relating bugs and behaviour Social Science and Medicine, 2003; 57(4):657-72
• Curtis, V.; Biran, A. Dirt, disgust, and disease. Is hygiene in our genes? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2001; 44(1):17-31
• Aunger, R.; Curtis, V. Kinds of behaviour Biology & Philosophy, 2008; 23(3):317-345
• Curtis, V.; Kanki, B.; Cousens, S.; Diallo, I.; Kpozehouen, A.; Sangare, M.; Nikiema, M. Evidence of behaviour change following a hygiene promotion programme in Burkina Faso Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2001; 79(6):518-27

Full publications listing (since 2001)