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Field
Abstract
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Before
Maternal and infant mortality in indigenous and rural areas of Panama is very high compared to the national average. This is partly due by the poor access to quality health services, that can be explained, in part, by the existence of geographical, cultural and economic barriers for the use of the services themselves.
This study aims to evaluate a project implemented by the Ministry of Health that provide incentives to increase the demand and utilization of prenatal health services in indigenous and rural areas of the country. There are two kind of schemes of incentives that will be provided on the utilization of pre-natal care services and institutional delivery at the community level. The first scheme provides incentives to pregnant women in the community, to the voluntary health promoters of the community, and to a community board. The second scheme of incentives provides incentives only to the pregnant women of the community. The evaluation will measure whether these schemes of incentives have an impact on the utilization of prenatal care services, institutional delivery and prevalence of maternal and infant mortality. The evaluation will measure the impact of the two schemes separately as well as the marginal impact of the incentives to the health promoters and to the community board.
For the evaluation purposes, the intervention will be implemented during 2017-2019 in the indigenous province of Ngabe Bugle and the neighboring provinces of Bocas del Toro, Chiriqui, and Veraguas. The evaluation will rely on an experimental design at the community level. The sample size of this experiment is 450 communities (and 4,500 observations of pregnancies).
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After
Maternal and infant mortality in indigenous and rural areas of Panama is very high compared to the national average. This is partly due by the poor access to quality health services, that can be explained, in part, by the existence of geographical, cultural and economic barriers for the use of the services themselves.
This study aims to evaluate a project implemented by the Ministry of Health that provide incentives to increase the demand and utilization of prenatal health services in indigenous and rural areas of the country. There are two kind of schemes of incentives that will be provided on the utilization of pre-natal care services and institutional delivery at the community level. The first scheme provides incentives to pregnant women in the community and to the voluntary health promoters of the community. The second scheme of incentives provides incentives only to the pregnant women of the community. The evaluation will measure whether these schemes of incentives have an impact on the utilization of prenatal care services, institutional delivery and prevalence of maternal and infant mortality. The evaluation will measure the impact of the two schemes separately as well as the marginal impact of the incentives to the health promoters.
For the evaluation purposes, the intervention will be implemented during 2019-2021 in the indigenous province of Ngabe Bugle. The evaluation will rely on an experimental design at the community level. The sample size of this experiment is 300 communities (and 3,000 observations of pregnancies).
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