The links between health, development, and poverty reduction are complex, and better understanding this relationship is an active area of research for both development economists and health practitioners. The Health Program seeks to promote the important contributions that randomized evaluations can make for understanding how improvements in health services and delivery can reduce poverty.
    
 Each year, significant resources are allocated to global health and development initiatives.  However, despite these substantial investments, improvements in global health indicators, including progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals, have been uneven. For example, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest data, encouraging declines in child mortality rates have occurred globally, while improvements in maternal mortality, TB and HIV/AIDS have been slower (World Health Statistics Report 2010). Moreover, the WHO reports worsening of certain key indicators such as prevalence of undernutrition in a number of countries.

This uneven progress highlights the importance of directing limited resources to the most effective strategies and programs. The randomized evaluations conducted by J-PAL’s affiliated professors measure the impact and cost-effectiveness of different approaches to improving health outcomes. The Health Program works to disseminate the results of these evaluations, to allow policymakers to choose programs based on rigorous evidence.

J-PAL evaluations are addressing critical health questions and generating rigorous evidence within a number of focal areas: maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation, and healthcare supply and delivery. Some examples include:

• increasing immunization rates through the use of mobile camps and small non-cash incentives in India;
• improving child health through school-based deworming in Kenya;
• using mobile phones to provide reproductive health information in Uganda;
• assessing the impact of HIV/AIDS prevention strategies targeting youth in Kenya.

For a complete list of health-related projects, please visit here.

J-PAL’s Health Program will continue to conduct randomized evaluations to answer key health questions. It will also conduct cost-effectiveness analyses to help policymakers choose programs which will have the largest impact per dollar spent. Furthermore, the program will disseminate findings to governments, stakeholders, and development organizations in conjunction with J-PAL’s Policy Group. Concurrently, the Health Program will conduct a broad, regional assessment of health and development to identify knowledge gaps and priority areas for impact evaluation. This comprehensive review will ultimately inform the Health Program’s long-term research agenda. 

The health program is chaired by Esther Duflo and Sebastian Galiani. The Program Manager is Vandana Sharma, with support from Angela Ambroz, Cristobal Marshall, and Anna Yalouris. For further inquiries, please contact aambroz@mit.edu.