Health and Medicine

FSI’s researchers assess health and medicine through the lenses of economics, nutrition and politics. They’re studying and influencing public health policies of local and national governments and the roles that corporations and nongovernmental organizations play in providing health care around the world. Scholars look at how governance affects citizens’ health, how children’s health care access affects the aging process and how to improve children’s health in Guatemala and rural China. They want to know what it will take for people to cook more safely and breathe more easily in developing countries.

FSI professors investigate how lifestyles affect health. What good does gardening do for older Americans? What are the benefits of eating organic food or growing genetically modified rice in China? They study cost-effectiveness by examining programs like those aimed at preventing the spread of tuberculosis in Russian prisons. Policies that impact obesity and undernutrition are examined; as are the public health implications of limiting salt in processed foods and the role of smoking among men who work in Chinese factories. FSI health research looks at sweeping domestic policies like the Affordable Care Act and the role of foreign aid in affecting the price of HIV drugs in Africa.

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The Stanford Internet Observatory will host analysts from the Virality Project to discuss the project’s findings from a year of observation and analysis on COVID-19 vaccine conversations online. The final report, “Memes, Magnets and Microchips: Narrative dynamics around COVID-19 vaccines,” will be available on February 24.

Join report contributors Renée DiResta, Kaitlyn Dowling, Cameron Hickey, Lily Meyersohn and Chase Small along with special guest Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative as they discuss the dynamics and impact of misleading information targeting the COVID-19 vaccines.

Panel Discussions
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The Stanford Internet Observatory will host analysts from the Virality Project to discuss the project’s findings from a year of observation and analysis on COVID-19 vaccine conversations online. The final report, “Memes, Magnets and Microchips: Narrative dynamics around COVID-19 vaccines,” will be available on February 24.

Join report contributors Renée DiResta, Kaitlyn Dowling, Cameron Hickey, Lily Meyersohn and Chase Small along with special guest Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative as they discuss the dynamics and impact of misleading information targeting the COVID-19 vaccines.

REGISTER

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Renée DiResta is the former Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social networks, and assists policymakers in understanding and responding to the problem. She has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations, and has studied disinformation and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare.

You can see a full list of Renée's writing and speeches on her website: www.reneediresta.com or follow her @noupside.

 

Former Research Manager, Stanford Internet Observatory
Kaitlyn Dowling
Cameron Hickey
Lily Meyersohn
Chase Small
Seema Yasmin
Seminars
Virality
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the release of the fourth episode of Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world. The podcast is part of the Mofeed-19 Project, an initiative that builds foundational resources for understanding how the politics and societies of the Arab world have adapted in light of the pandemic. Mofeed-19 is supported in part by the Open Society Foundation.

Cohosted by ARD Scholars Amr Hamzawy and Hesham Sallam, the fourth episode, which was conducted in the Arabic language, features the award-winning Jordanian-Palestinian novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah. Nasrallah discussed the impact of COVID-19 on literary production in the Arab world, and reexamined the themes of dystopia, isolation, and individualism in his previous novels in light of the pandemic. 

Watch the fourth episode below, and follow the podcast on Spotify:

Follow Mofeed-19 on Social Media

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ARD Launches CARDs Interview Series

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL is pleased to announce the launch of an interview series titled “Conversations on Arab Reform and Democracy” (CARDs).
ARD Launches CARDs Interview Series
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Subtitle

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the release of the fourth episode of Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world.

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Using administrative data on over 4 million hospital visits, we document striking gender disparities within a government health insurance program that entitles 46 million poor individuals to free hospital care in Rajasthan, India. Females account for only 33% of hospital visits among children and 43% among the elderly. These shares are lower for more expensive types of care, and far lower than sex differences in illness prevalence can explain. Almost two-thirds of non-childbirth spending is on males. We combine these data with patient survey, census, and electoral data to show that 1) the program is unable to fully offset the costs of care-seeking, which results in disparities in hospital utilization because some households are willing to allocate more resources to male than female health; 2) lowering costs does not reduce disparities, because males benefit as much as females do; and 3) long-term exposure to village-level female leaders reduces the gender gap in utilization, but effects are modest and limited to girls and young women. In the presence of gender bias, increasing access to and subsidizing social services may increase levels of female utilization but fail to address gender inequalities without actions that specifically target females.

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Radhika Jain 4X4 022521
Radhika Jain is the Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow for 2019-2022 at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC).  Her research focuses on health care markets, the effectiveness of public health policy, and gender disparities in health.

She completed her doctorate in the Department of Global Health at Harvard University in 2019. Her dissertation examined the extent to which government subsidies for health care under insurance are captured by private hospitals instead of being passed through to patients, and whether accountability measures can help patients claim their entitlements. Dr. Jain's research has been supported by grants from the Weiss Family Fund and the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL). She has worked on impact evaluations of health programs in India and on the implementation of HIV programs across several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. She also held a doctoral fellowship at the Center for Global Development.

At Shorenstein APARC, Radhika is starting new work on understanding the factors that contribute to poor female health outcomes and interventions to increase the effectiveness of public health insurance.

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This event is part of the 2022 Spring webinar series, Negotiating Women's Rights and Gender Equality in Asia, sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Via Zoom Webinar
Register: bit.ly/3otRoDZ

2019-2022 Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
Seminars

Stanford Health Policy
Encina Commons, Room 185
615 Crothers Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6019

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Sharon Beckstrand currently supports the faculty and staff at the Center for Health Policy and the Department of Health Policy. Before coming to Stanford, Sharon was a technical and marketing writer for companies in the Austin area, as well as a supply chain analyst. She received a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe.

Administrative Associate
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Adrienne Sabety of University of Notre Dame

Adrienne Sabety, PhD, is a Wilson Family LEO Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. She is also a research faculty member at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at Notre Dame. Her research focuses on access to care and treatment for disadvantaged populations, like undocumented immigrants. She also studies major changes in health care markets, such as the design of insurance marketplaces and adverse climate shocks. She received an AS in Mathematics from Cuesta Community College, a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley, and a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard in 2020.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. 

When: Feb. 18, 2022, at 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Zoom Link

Seminars
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Stephen Kissler
Stephen Kissler is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He earned his PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar, where he studied the transmission of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. At Harvard, Stephen has focused on identifying drivers of antibiotic resistance and, more recently, on SARS-CoV-2 response. In addition to his research, he has consulted with Partners in Health and provided comments for numerous media outlets during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. 

When: Feb. 14, 2022, at 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Zoom Link

Seminars

This event will offer simultaneous translation between Japanese and English. 
当イベントは日本語と英語の同時通訳がついています。

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.
当イベントはZoomウェビナーで行われます。ウェビナーに参加するためには、
こちらのリンクをクリックし、事前登録をして下さい。


Febuary 14, 4-5:30 p.m. California time/ February 15, 9-10:30 a.m. Japan time

This event is part of the 2022 Japan Program Winter webinar series, The Future of Social Tech: U.S.-Japan Partnership in Advancing Technology and Innovation with Social Impact

 

COVID-19 has changed the way we work. While remote work has become the norm, the pandemic has also highlighted the inequity in childcare, elderly care, and household work. Japanese workplaces feel a particularly acute need for adjustment, as lack of digitalization and persistent gender inequality continue to limit productivity gains and diversity in the workforce. Social entrepreneurs in Japan have started offering new technologies that address these problems and transform Japanese work environments, using matching algorithms, innovative apps, and other new technologies. How can these social technologies reshape the workplace? What principles do we need in using these technologies in practice, in order to unlock the keys to untapped human resource potentials and realize a more equitable and inclusive work environment in Japan, the United States, and elsewhere?  Fuhito Kojima, a renowned economist specializing in matching theory, will talk about market design from the perspective of regulation design and economics, and Eiko Nakazawa, an influential entrepreneur, will speak about her experiences founding education and childcare startups in the United States and Japan, moderated by Yasumasa Yamamoto, a leading expert on technology and business in Japan and the United States. 

 

Panelists

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Photo of Fuhito Kojima
Fuhito Kojima is a Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo and Director of the University of Tokyo Market Design Center. He received a B.A. at University of Tokyo (2003) and PhD at Harvard (2008), both in economics and taught at Yale (2008-2009, as postdoc) and then Stanford (2009-2020, as professor) while spending one year at Columbia in his sabbatical year. His research involves game theory, with a particular focus on “market design,” a field where game-theoretic analysis is applied to study the design of various mechanisms and institutions. His recent works include matching mechanism designs with complex constraints, and he is working on improving medical residency match and daycare seat allocation in Japan based on his academic work. Outside of academia, he serves as an advisor for Keizai Doyu Kai as well as several private companies.

 

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Photo of Eiko Nakazawa
Eiko Nakazawa is the Founder and CEO of Dearest, Inc., a VC-Backed startup in the United States that makes high-quality learning, childcare, and parenting support accessible by helping employers subsidize those costs for their working families. She also advises and invests in early-stage startups, and has recently co-founded Ikura, Inc., an education x fintech company in Japan. Prior to founding Dearest, Nakazawa spent 11 years with Sony Corporation, where she led global marketing, turnaround, and new business launch initiatives. Nakazawa earned an M.S. in Management from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 

 

Moderator

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Photo of Yasumasa Yamamoto
Yasumasa Yamamoto is a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University graduate school of management and has been a specialist in emerging technology such as fintech, blockchain, and deep learning. He was previously industry analyst at Google, senior specialist in quantitative analysis of secularized products, as well as derivatives at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi in New York. Yamamoto holds a M.S. from Harvard University and a masters degree from University of Tokyo.





 

Via Zoom Webinar
Register:  https://bit.ly/3odkWFT 

 

 

Fuhito Kojima <br>Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo<br><br>
Eiko Nakazawa <br>Founder and CEO, Dearest Inc.<br><br>
Yasumasa Yamamoto <br>Visiting Professor at Kyoto University
Panel Discussions
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We conducted a cluster-randomized trial to measure the effect of community-level mask distribution and promotion on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections in rural Bangladesh from November 2020 to April 2021 (N = 600 villages, N = 342,183 adults). We cross-randomized mask type (cloth vs. surgical) and promotion strategies at the village and household level. Proper mask-wearing increased from 13.3% in the control group to 42.3% in the intervention arm (adjusted percentage point difference = 0.29 [0.26, 0.31]). The intervention reduced symptomatic seroprevalence (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) = 0.91 [0.82, 1.00]), especially among adults 60+ years in villages where surgical masks were distributed (aPR = 0.65 [0.45, 0.85]). Mask distribution and promotion was a scalable and effective method to reduce symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

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Working Papers
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A randomized trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh during COVID-19 shows that the intervention increased mask-use and reduced symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Journal Publisher
Innovations for Poverty Action
Authors
Stephen P. Luby
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