Study Results from Department of Monitoring and Evaluation Broaden Understanding of Public Health (The effect of health financing reforms on incidence and management of childhood infections in Ghana: a matching difference in differences impact …): Health and Medicine – Public Health

Health Policy and Law Daily

2022 AUG 24 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Investigators discuss new findings in public health. According to news reporting out of the Department of Monitoring and Evaluation by NewsRx editors, research stated, “In 2003, Ghana abolished direct out of pockets payments and implemented health financing reforms including the national health insurance scheme in 2004. Treatment of childhood infections is a key component of services covered under this scheme, yet, outcomes on incidence and treatment of these infections after introducing these reforms have not been covered in evaluation studies.”

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from Department of Monitoring and Evaluation: “This study fills this gap by assessing the impact on the reforms on the two most dominant childhood infections; fever (malaria) and diarrhoea. Nigeria was used as the control country with pre-intervention period of 1990 and 2003 and 1993 and 1998 in Ghana. Post-intervention period was 2008 and 2014 in Ghana and 2008 and 2018 in Nigeria. Data was acquired from demographic health surveys in both countries and propensity score matching was calculated based on background socioeconomic covariates. Following matching, difference in difference analysis was conducted to estimate average treatment on the treated effects. All analysis were conducted in STATA (psmatch2, psgraph and pstest) and statistical significance was considered when p-value 0.05. After matching, it was determined that health reforms significantly increased general medical care for children with diarrhoea (25 percentage points) and fever (40 percentage points). Also for those receiving care specifically in government managed facilities for diarrhoea (14 percentage points) and fever (24 percentage points).”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Introduction of health financing reforms in Ghana had positive effects on childhood infections (malaria and diarrhoea).”

For more information on this research see: The effect of health financing reforms on incidence and management of childhood infections in Ghana: a matching difference in differences impact evaluation. BMC Public Health, 2022,22(1):1-7. (BMC Public Health - http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Public Health is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13934-y.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Emmanuel Nene Odjidja, Department of Monitoring and Evaluation, Kigutu Village Health Works. Additional authors for this research include Ruth Ansah-Akrofi, Arnaud Iradukunda, Charles Kwanin, Manika Saha.