Global Underdevelopment Action Fund Grant Awardees
ROUND 1 • ROUND 2 • ROUND 3 • ROUND 4
- Explaining and Improving U.S. Global Health Financing
Eran Bendavid
With a sharp divergence between justifications for global health funding and the countries and diseases to which funding is disbursed, this study will conduct a quantitative analysis of the determinants of U.S. financing for the 171 countries receiving development assistance for health in 2009. The project seeks to identify the key drivers for U.S. global health financing by country and facilitate research on how to make global health financing work better.
- Peasants into Democrats: Evaluating the Impact of Information on Local Governance in Mali
James Fearon
Recent research suggests that enhancing voter information holds promise for increasing government accountability in new democracies. This project will undertake a field experiment in Mali, a model of an underperforming new democracy, to test the theory that information that sufficiently raises citizen voter expectations of government performance can have an important effect on governance. It will examine the impact of an intervention that provides citizens with a civics course on voter and government behavior. - Effects of “Best Buy Health and Nutrition Toolkit” for Improving Educational Outcomes in Rural China
Scott Rozelle
Studies show high levels of anemia, nearsightedness, intestinal worms, and poor health and sanitation among children in China’s rural boarding schools. This project will measure initial health and nutrition levels of students in a randomized control setting, and deploy a set of affordable and sustainable interventions in treatment schools that includes multivitamins, eyeglasses, deworming medication, and nutrition and sanitation training. The project will then assess what works and what does not by comparing improvements in academic performance in treatment and control groups. The results of this experiment are intended to inform education and nutrition policy in China at the central and provincial levels. - Controlling Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: A Cooperative Agenda for China and North Korea
Gary Schoolnik
Rates of tuberculosis, a disease that thrives on poverty, malnutrition, and interrupted medical care, are now among the highest in the world in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea), elevating the risk of an epidemic of drug-resistant strains and a spread into China. This project represents a unique historical opportunity to examine the relationship between food security, malnutrition, and the epidemiology of tuberculosis in a present-day famine. - Political Causes of Russia’s Public Health Crisis
Kathryn Stoner
In spite of the economic advances and increases in GDP since the collapse of communism, Russia suffers from a range of dismal public health outcomes reminiscent of a much poorer country. This study seeks to understand what role political factors play in the country’s high adult mortality rate and declining life expectancy by mining World Bank and World Health Organization data and examining how Russians access healthcare services and information . - Factors Affecting Adoption and Ongoing Use of Improved Biomass Stoves in Karnataka and Maharashtra, India
Frank Wolak
Burning of biomass in traditional stoves is associated with a host of ills among an estimated 2.5 billion people around the world, even though cleaner and more efficient technologies exist that could mitigate the problems. This study will examine what factors affect cooking mode choice and utilization, with the objective of developing an econometric model that is useful for efforts that encourage the adoption of improved biomass stoves. The project also seeks to offer insights on poorly understood processes of technology adoption among poor populations and to understand the magnitude of health, development, and environmental benefits that might be attainable.
- Can Mobile Phones Coordinate Community Action to Improve Women’s Safety in Slums?
Joshua Cohen
The program uses mobile technology to measure whether the number of assaults on women will decrease if they travel in groups. The project will evaluate whether this “safety in numbers” program can be taken over by Kenyan police.
- Water, Food, and Disease at the the Intersection of Poverty and Development in Rural Africa
Jenna Davis
This project will measure the effects of poverty along the water-food-health nexus among rural households in Kenya, specifically, how differential access to domestic and productive water supplies, along with food security, and HIV and TB disease burden relate to changes in poverty over time among adults living in rural Kenyan households. - Governance, Public Goods, and Political Autonomy in Indigenous Mexico
Beatriz Magaloni
This project exploits a unique institutional feature in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where municipalities were allowed to choose between a form of autonomy called “usos y costumbres” or delegating decisions to “modern” forms of representative government to see whether political autonomy enhances development outcomes for indigenous communities. - Teaming up to Learn How to Overcome Anemia: Nutritional Education and Mobile Messaging Design for Household Engagement
Scott Rozelle
This study seeks to understand whether developing an innovative curriculum kit that will supplement health instruction for 3rd to 6th grade students and teachers in underdeveloped areas of rural China can also be delivered to parents in a set of pilot schools will: improve nutrition and the knowledge of teacher, students and parents about nutrition; reduce the level of anemia; and increase educational performance. - Examining Barriers to the Commercialization of Medical Technology in India
Paul Yock
The Stanford-India Biodesign (SIB) program is designed to bring to market novel medical devices for India’s medically underserved, including those living in poverty. The purpose of the study is to identify the barriers that exist in India to commercializing low-cost medical technologies.
- Texting for Sexual Health: Effects of Information Provision and Common Knowledge on Health-Seeking Behavior in Kenya
Joshua Cohen
In hopes of increasing awareness that could minimize sexual health risks, the team will promote a mobile health counseling service, which will enable young people in Nairobi’s Mathare slums to receive private and reliable answers from health counselors through text messaging. - Crime, Violence and Governance in Latin America: Sharing Data and Building a Web-Based Research Network to Expand Knowledge
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar
This project will build a systematically organized repository of research on crime, violence and citizen security in Latin America. - Tuberculosis Control and its Benefits to the Rural Poor
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
This study will determine the impact of improved TB control effects in India, which accounts for 20 percent of global TB incidence, and project economic outcomes from India’s TB epidemic over the next decade. - Paying for Performance to Improve Health in Rural China: Does Resource Scarcity Breed Innovation in Service Delivery?
Grant Miller
This study will evaluate whether large subsidies are necessary for improving social situations like lowering anemia rates or improving test scores. - Health and Political Reform in the Arab World
Paul Wise
Partnering with The Lancet journal and the American University of Beirut, the team will produce a series of articles on war, social change and health in the Arab world with a goal of improving health care in countries undergoing political transition. - Solar Lighting and Phone Charging in East Africa: Understanding Adoption, Business Models and Development Outcomes
Frank Wolak
This project will analyze new solar businesses in East Africa. Electricity is central to industry, health services and education, yet 1.5 billion people worldwide lack access. Recently, low-power solar energy sources in homes have appeared as viable options. - Understanding the Current Status of Medical Technology in Rural China
Paul Yock
This study will evaluate the use of medical technology in rural China in order to establish a baseline for future work and establish partnerships. The long-term goal is an analytical framework within which to understand the role of medical technology in Chinese health care.
- Exploring the Social and Religious Determinants of Female Genital Cutting in Egypt and North-Central Africa
Lisa Blaydes
Female genital cutting (FGC) remains a nearly ubiquitous cultural practice among ever-married women in Egypt, Eritrea, Mali and Sudan, and is practiced elsewhere in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The goal of this project is to describe the social and religious determinants of FGC in these societies and to explore the factors underlying declines in FGC in countries like Egypt. - Rethinking Refugee Communities
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar
CISAC will facilitate ongoing, longer-term collaboration between UNHCR and some of the design professionals who have been working with Stanford, including a leading architecture firm and ideo.org. - Evaluation of Favela Community Policing Experiment in Rio de Janeiro
James Fearon
We want to do a systematic evaluation of the impact of a widely discussed experiment in community policing: the Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora program being implemented in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro under the direction of Rio Public Safety Secretary José Mariano Beltrame. - Comparing the Efficacy of a Cash Transfer Program with Pre-exposure Prophylaxis in HIV Prevention
David Grusky
The simple premise behind this study: The social factors that are often assumed to be intractable can, to the contrary, often be addressed at lower cost than the typically preferred biomedical approach. The goal of the project is to address HIV prevention in resource poor settings by integrating sociological insights within a clinical framework. - Social Dynamics of Avian Influenza Transmission in Bangladesh
James Holland Jones
We propose a study that explores the social dynamics of key importance for transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) in endemic, rural Bangladesh. We will measure the social networks and mobility patterns of people at high risk for H5N1 transmission and model how local, individual behaviors aggregate into emergent population-level dynamics that influence transmission. - What Can the Accuracy of National Census Reveal about Patterns of Institutional Quality within Countries over Time?
Stephen Krasner
Understanding the causes of state incapacity is now high on the policy agenda for many states and international institutions. To address these issues, we are developing a new indicator to measure state capacity at both the national and sub-national levels over the past 50 years. - Governance and Social Norms: Why Corruption Persists Despite Institutional Reform
David Laitin
We have designed a behavioral experiment in Italy that will allow us to disentangle the multiple mechanisms that exist to explain the reasons behind corruption reporting in Italy. Our research design leverages the fact that Italians from the North and South of the country differ substantially in terms of how much corruption they encounter in everyday life, hence they are likely to have developed different social norms with respect to corruption tolerance.
- Improving Brick Manufacturing in Bangladesh
Stephen Luby
To better understand the system of incentives that supports the current reliance on highly polluting brick kilns, the principal investigator is currently overseeing a small study in Bangladesh where a team is conducting in-depth interviews of brick kiln owners, farmers who sell topsoil to brick kiln owners, brick purchasers and government regulators responsible for enforcing environmental regulations for brick kilns. - Human Trafficking Vulnerability: An Experimental Intervention Using Mass Media to Change Norms and Behaviors in Nepal
Jenny Martinez
This research project aims to address the effect of media campaigns through a field experiment in Nepal that uses custom-designed graphic novel stories to provide different types of anti-trafficking messages to key actors involved in trafficking. - Safety and Efficacy of Probiotics in Bangladeshi Infants and Children
Julie Parsonnet
The longterm goal of this research is to determine the effects of probiotics on health and growth in infants and children in a low-income setting. Our ultimate goal is to determine if probiotics—inexpensive and easily manufactured products—can serve as an effective intervention to reduce diarrhea, malnutrition and stunting during the period early in life critical to long-term growth and development. - Executive Function: A Better Way to Evaluate the Impact of Deworming on Children's Educational Outcomes?
Scott Rozelle
Our project focuses on one neglected disease in China: infection with intestinal roundworms. Intestinal roundworms have a devastating effect on a population, siphoning valuable nutrients away from the host and leading to malnutrition and delayed growth. In our study, we aim to contribute to this literature by conducting a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) in rural China.
- Directly measuring the value of solar home systems in East Africa
Frank Wolak
The research proposed here seeks to exploit new data logging technology being developed by BBOXX, a commercial provider of solar-powered battery systems in East Africa, to directly measure how consumers use such battery systems in their homes.
