Urban slum communities throughout the Indian subcontinent face critical challenges including inadequate access to safe water and environmental degradation, resulting in significant public health impacts. A research collaboration between Queen's University and the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) has been established on water, environment, and public health in slums, aiming to develop and evaluate technological and policy alternatives for sustainable safe water provision in slums. Point-of-use water quality treatment and detection techniques will be developed in the lab and then assessed for efficacy at controlling diarrhoeal and other water-borne diseases through a community-level integrated intervention in Mylai Balaji Nagar, Chennai, India. Reflecting the complexity of the issue, potential solutions must go beyond the technical to the social, economic, and political if they are to be sustainable; issues on water systems management will also be explored by the research collaboration. © 2009.