Investigators at University of North Carolina Discuss Findings in Managed Care (‘poverty Can Break a Home’: Exploring Mechanisms Linking Cash Plus Programming and Intimate Partner Violence In Ghana): Managed Care

Health Policy and Law Daily

2022 AUG 16 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- A new study on Managed Care is now available. According to news originating from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “A growing body of research in West Africa and globally shows that cash transfers can decrease intimate partner violence (IPV). The purpose of this study was to explore how the government of Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) 1000 program, an unconditional cash transfer plus health insurance premium waiver targeted at pregnant women and women with young children, influenced IPV experiences.”

Financial supporters for this research include CGIAR, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), National Institutes of Health, specifically NICHD, NIA of the National Institutes of Health.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of North Carolina, “Existing program theory hypothesizes three pathways through which cash transfers influence IPV, including: 1) increased economic security and emotional wellbeing; 2) reduced intra-household conflict; and 3) increased women’s empowerment. Informed by this theory, we conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with women in northern Ghana (n = 30) who were or had been beneficiaries of LEAP 1000 and had reported declines in IPV in an earlier impact evaluation. We used narrative and thematic analytic techniques to examine these pathways in the context of gender norms and household dynamics, as well as a fourth potential pathway focused on interactions with healthcare providers. Overall, the most prominent narrative was that poverty is the main determinant of physical IPV and that by reducing poverty, LEAP 1000 reduced conflict and violence in households and communities and improved emotional wellbeing. Participant narratives also supported pathways of reduced intra-household conflict and increased empowerment, as well as interplay between these three pathways. However, participants also reflected that cash transfers did not fundamentally change gender norms or reduce gender-role strain in a context of ongoing economic insecurity, which could limit the gender transformative potential and sustainability of IPV reductions. Finally, while health insurance increased access to healthcare, local norms, shame, fear, and minimal provider screening deterred IPV disclosure to healthcare providers.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Additional research is needed to explore interplay between pathways of impact across programs with different design features and implementation contexts to continue informing effective programming to maximize impact.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: ‘poverty Can Break a Home’: Exploring Mechanisms Linking Cash Plus Programming and Intimate Partner Violence In Ghana. Social Science & Medicine, 2022;292. Social Science & Medicine can be contacted at: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Social Science & Medicine - http://www.journals.elsevier.com/social-science-and-medicine/)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Clare Barrington, University of North Carolina, Dept. of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, Chapel Hill, NC 27515, United States. Additional authors for this research include Akalpa J. Akaligaung, Amber Peterman, Raymond A. Aborigo, Tia Palermo and Marlous de Milliano.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114521. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)