03. Journals
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These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.
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Publication Centring Rights-Based Access to Self-Care Interventions(Taylor and Francis, 2022-11-11) Ferguson, Laura; Narasimhan, ManjulaaEnsuring sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is fundamental to the success of the Sustainable Development Goals and a range of other global commitments. As such, innovations that can help promote SRHR, including self-care interventions, offer exciting opportunities to improve health and rights simultaneously. While self-care is not new conceptually, the growing number of evidence-based technologies, medicines and products that can be accessed outside of the formal health sector point to the role lay people play as active participants in their own health care.Publication The Timing of Elections and Neonatal Mortality: Evidence from India(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-10-08) Bhattacharjee, ShampaThis paper uncovers evidence of political cycles in developmental outcomes in the Indian context. Comparing children born to the same mother, it shows that children born 0-11 months before scheduled state legislative assembly elections have a significantly lower risk of neonatal mortality. The effect of being born just before elections is higher in politically more competitive regions. The paper provides some evidence of the channels behind this result. The usage of prenatal care increases before elections and mothers of children born before elections are more likely to have antenatal checkups and tetanus injections during pregnancy. Components of antenatal checkups, like the probability of having a blood test or an abdominal examination during pregnancy, also increase before elections. The improvement in child health outcomes before elections seems to be driven by a transfer of resources from non-election to election years rather than an overall improvement in child health outcomes.Publication Long-term Well-being Among Survivors of the Rwandan and Cambodian Genocides(Taylor and Francis, 2021-05-17) Milazzo, Annamaria; Cuesta, JoseThis paper adds to the thin empirical literature estimating the long-term effects of exposure to conflict from in utero to adolescence on adult well-being. The effects through adolescence of the two worst genocides in recent history—those occurring in Rwanda (1994) and Cambodia (1975–79)—are examined. The Rwandan genocide is shown to have produced long-term health outcomes among women exposed to the conflict during adolescence. A further contribution is the analysis of gendered effects during adolescence, which is enabled by the availability of data on men’s height for Rwanda. The long-term effects are confirmed for men, however this appears to be the consequence of exposure during adolescence later than for women, a result that is consistent with the biological literature on the differential timing of the onset of puberty by gender. No significant effects are detected in the case of the Cambodian genocide and we discuss some issues that may influence this result. Although more research and better data are needed, our results are suggestive of adolescent-specific effects of the Rwandan genocide, which may be comparable or larger than those previously found for younger children.Publication Disrupted Service Delivery? The Impact of Conflict on Antenatal Care Quality in Kenya(Frontiers Media, 2021-02-28) Wong, Kerry L.M.; Chukwuma, Adanna; Ekhator-Mobayode, Uche EseosaAfrican countries facing conflict have higher levels of maternal mortality. Understanding the gaps in the utilization of high-quality maternal health care is essential to improving maternal survival in these states. Few studies have estimated the impact of conflict on the quality of health care. In this study, we estimated the impact of conflict on the quality of health care in Kenya, a country with multiple overlapping conflicts and significant disparities in maternal survival. Our study demonstrates the importance of designing maternal health policy based on the context-specific evidence on the mechanisms through which conflict affects health care. In Kenya, deterioration of equipment and infrastructure does not appear to be the main mechanism through which conflict has affected ANC quality. Further research should focus on better understanding the determinants of the gaps in process quality in conflict-affected settings, including provider motivation, competence, and incentives.Publication Flies without Borders: Lessons from Chennai on Improving India's Municipal Public Health Services(Taylor and Francis, 2020-05) Gupta, Monica Das; Dasgupta, Rajib; Kugananthan, P.; Rao, Vijayendra; Somanathan, T.V.; Tewari, K.N.India’s cities face key challenges to improving public health outcomes. First, unequally distributed public resources create insanitary conditions, especially in slums – threatening everyone’s health, as suggested by poor child growth even among the wealthiest. Second, devolving services to elected bodies works poorly for highly technical services like public health. Third, services are highly fragmented. This paper examines the differences in the organisation and management of municipal services in Chennai and Delhi, two cities with sharply contrasting health indicators. Chennai mitigates these challenges by retaining professional management of service delivery and actively serving vulnerable populations − while services in Delhi are quite constrained. Management and institutional issues have received inadequate attention in the public health literature on developing countries, and the policy lessons from Chennai have wide relevance.