Interdisciplinary research on global health problems through the lenses of economics, nutrition and politics.
Research Spotlight
Tackling the Health of Women and Children in Global Conflict Settings
A new four-paper series in The Lancet exposes the far-reaching effects of modern warfare on women’s and children’s health. Stanford researchers, including SHP's Paul Wise and Eran Bendavid, have joined other academics and health-care experts in calling for an international commitment from humanitarian actors and donors to confront political and security challenges.
Many countries have taken digital epidemiology to the next level in responding to COVID-19. Focusing on core public health functions of case detection, contact tracing, and isolation and quarantine, the authors explore ethical concerns raised by digital technologies and new data sources in public health surveillance during epidemics.
Does Diversity Matter for Health? Experimental Evidence from Oakland
African-American men have the lowest life expectancy of any major demographic group in
the United States and live on average 4.5 fewer years than non-Hispanic white men. This paper finds that the mortality disparity is partly related to underutilized preventive
healthcare services.
As government agencies move to adopt AI across a range of programs, choices made in system design can ensure individuals’ ability to effectively challenge decisions made about them.
To better understand the impacts of parenting interventions (e.g., parental training of psychosocial stimulating activities) on child developmental outcomes and design effective policies to benefit young children, it is essential to identify the mechanisms through which the interventions work. To this end, this paper presents the results of two randomized controlled trials that offered home visitation, parenting trainings to 435 households (with 527 households as the control group) in 174 villages across three provinces in China. The findings from the randomized controlled trials showed that the interventions significantly improved child cognitive development and had a positive effect on the primary caregivers’ parenting practices and their parenting beliefs. The analysis suggests three possible mechanisms through which the parenting interventions affected child cognitive development: changing the parenting beliefs of the primary caregivers, shifting the parenting practices of the primary caregivers, and improving the primary caregivers’ parenting beliefs, thus fostering better parenting practices.
Given the size of the problem and the scientific evidence that timely intervention can improve long-term outcomes, an important question is how to best scale-up early childhood development (ECD) interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A key component of the solution is financing. However, there has been little research on the question of whether cost-sharing models can equitably and sustainably finance ECD programs at scale in LMICs. We built parenting centers in two rural communities of Western China to teach caregivers how to stimulate child development through fun and interactive activities. We used the Becker-Degroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism to elicit the household willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a one-month pass to the parenting centers. The results of the BDM suggest that a cost-sharing model would not be suitable for China's rural population at least in the short-run. Demand was found to be highly elastic. In addition, we found limited evidence of selection effects. We also found no evidence of sunk-cost effects.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
February 20, 2024
From Mesopotamian cities to industrialized nations, gossip has been at the center of bonding human groups. Yet the evolution of gossip remains a puzzle. The current article argues that gossip evolves because its dissemination of individuals’ reputations induces individuals to cooperate with those who gossip. As a result, gossipers proliferate as well as sustain the reputation system and cooperation.
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER),
February 20, 2024
This paper studies the unintended effect of English language requirement on educational inequality by investigating how the staggered rollout of English listening tests in China’s high-stakes National College Entrance Exam (NCEE) affected the rural-urban gap in college access. Leveraging administrative data covering the universe of NCEE participants between 1999 and 2003, we find that the introduction of English listening tests significantly lowered rural students’ exam score percentile ranks relative to their urban counterparts, resulting in a 30% increase in the rural-urban gap in college access. Our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that, as a result of this policy change, more than 54,000 rural students lost college seats to their urban peers between 1999 and 2003, and another 11,000 rural students who elite colleges could have admitted ended up in non-elite colleges, causing them significant future income losses.
Patient Education and Counseling,
February 15, 2024
Objectives Patient satisfaction is an essential indicator of the doctor-patient relationship. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between primary care quality and patient satisfaction for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in rural western China.
Methods The study utilized the standardized patients (SPs) approach to present typical symptoms of unstable angina and diabetes to rural healthcare providers. After the consultations, the SPs completed a satisfaction survey. Ordinary least squares and quantile regression were used to examine the association between quality of primary care and patient satisfaction.
Results We examined 178 anonymous SPs visits. The results showed that higher process quality for angina SPs was correlated with stronger satisfaction for provider ability at a low quantile of ability satisfaction. For diabetes SPs, higher process quality increased overall satisfaction at a low quantile of overall satisfaction, whereas a correct diagnosis significantly contributed to communication satisfaction at a high quantile of communication satisfaction.
Conclusions The study found positive associations between process and diagnosis quality and SPs satisfaction. Notably, the influence of process quality was most significant among patients with lower satisfaction levels.
