May 2018 - Healthcare delivery during crises

On Thursday May 24th, dr. ir. Maarten Voors (Wageningen University) visited us at the Faculty of Economics and Business to talk about his latest research on healthcare delivery during crises. This seminar was organised by Centre of Expertise Healthwise, the signature area Public Health and the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health.

About dr. ir. Maarten Voors

Maarten Voors is an Assistant Professor at the Development Economics Group at Wageningen University. His main field is development and experimental economics. His research focuses on institutions, social capital, (post-conflict) development and behavior and he uses a variety of methods including surveys, lab and field experiments and econometric analysis.

Voors conducted field research in Burundi, Sierra Leone, Liberia and DRC. Recent projects include field experiments on formal and informal institutions in development and the role of social networks in technology adoption in post-conflict and developing areas. Voors is a member and the current Trainings Director of EGAP, a network of academics doing experimental research in development.

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Abstract

Healthcare Delivery during Crises: Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone's Ebola Outbreak

The 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest ever recorded. Post-mortems on the crisis assert that engaged and accountable health personnel slowed transmission by encouraging early isolation and treatment - a major challenge given fears about sub-standard care and stigma.

We take advantage of a unique opportunity to experimentally test this "lesson learned": roughly a year before the outbreak in Sierra Leone, two interventions were randomly assigned to government-run health clinics, one focused on community monitoring of clinics and the other on status awards for nurses.

We find that these programs substantially increased the reported number of Ebola cases in the sections where they were implemented. We explore three possible explanations: the programs (i) unintentionally increased incidence; (ii) improved surveillance efforts; and/or (iii) increased the likelihood that patients sought care. We only find evidence consistent with the last. By improving the perceived quality of healthcare, the programs may have encouraged patients to report and receive treatment.