Water, environment, and health insecurities in marginalised communities: Insights from eastern Slovakia

Populations on the margins of society, and the challenges they face, are often invisible and systematically excluded from decision-making and health-promoting interventions. The lack of disaggregated national statistics and comprehensive high-quality assessments covering diverse subgroups within marginalised populations makes it difficult to understand and reduce water, environment and health insecurities that affect them disproportionally. We aim to (i) improve the acquisition of information on water, environment, and health insecurity in marginalised communities; (ii) integrate social science (surveys, photovoice, discussions), medical research (parasitological and microbiological sampling), geoinformation science and remote sensing (UAV imagery, mapping) in Roma communities in three villages in Košice Self-governing Region, Slovakia; and (iii) reflect on the feasibility and usefulness of the applied research approaches and methods to raise awareness of the need for methodological flexibility and context-specific adjustments in complex and challenging settings. Our integrated geo-socio-tech-med approach enhances access to reliable, up-to-date information by triangulating data from multiple perspectives - from above (remote sensing), around (environmental and parasitological sampling), and within (community-based participatory research) - capturing both objective conditions and lived experiences for contextual integration, and highlighting potential pathways for interventions informed by the Roma communities themselves.