Stanford University

Health and Medicine

FSI’s researchers assess health and medicine through the lenses of economics, nutrition and politics. They’re studying and influencing public health policies of local and national governments and the roles that corporations and nongovernmental organizations play in providing health care around the world. Scholars look at how governance affects citizens’ health, how children’s health care access affects the aging process and how to improve children’s health in Guatemala and rural China. They want to know what it will take for people to cook more safely and breathe more easily in developing countries.

FSI professors investigate how lifestyles affect health. What good does gardening do for older Americans? What are the benefits of eating organic food or growing genetically modified rice in China? They study cost-effectiveness by examining programs like those aimed at preventing the spread of tuberculosis in Russian prisons. Policies that impact obesity and undernutrition are examined; as are the public health implications of limiting salt in processed foods and the role of smoking among men who work in Chinese factories. FSI health research looks at sweeping domestic policies like the Affordable Care Act and the role of foreign aid in affecting the price of HIV drugs in Africa.

Increasing COVID-19 Vaccination in Kenya

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Leah Rosenzweig seminar

While initial supply shortages delayed access to the COVID-19 vaccine for many low and middle income countries, most now have an abundance of doses. Yet only a quarter of African citizens have completed their COVID-19 vaccination primary series. Exploring effective modes of vaccine delivery is necessary to increase uptake. In collaboration with the Kenyan government, we conducted a field experiment to examine whether ease of access and requests from authority figures influence COVID-19 vaccination rates. By comparing rates between facility and community based vaccination activities, we are able to calculate the cost effectiveness of these policies, offering insights that are useful now and for future pandemics.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Leah Rosenzweig
Leah Rosenzweig is Director and Lead Researcher at the Development Innovation Lab (DIL) at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the micro-foundations of political and social behavior to gain leverage on macro policy-relevant questions. Her current work in the political economy of development explores the existence and consequences of social norms of voting in semi-authoritarian states, government accountability in low- and middle-income countries, and inter-group relations. She also works on designing and evaluating optimal policies to combat the spread of online misinformation and increase vaccination, as well as applied research methods. Prior to joining DIL, Leah held positions at Stanford University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, and was a consultant for the Nigerian government. Leah received her PhD in Political Science from MIT.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Didi Kuo
Didi Kuo

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Leah R. Rosenzweig

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CDDRL Postdoctoral Scholar, 2020-21
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My research centers on topics in comparative politics and the political economy of development. I focus on the micro-foundations of political behavior to gain leverage on macro-political questions. How do autocrats survive? How can citizen-state relations be improved and government accountability strengthened? Can shared identities mitigate out-group animosity? Adopting a multi-method approach, I use lab-in-the-field and online experiments, surveys, and in-depth field research to examine these questions in sub-Saharan Africa and the US. My current book project reexamines the role of elections in authoritarian endurance and explains why citizens vote in elections with foregone conclusions in Tanzania and Uganda. Moving beyond conventional paradigms, my theory describes how a social norm of voting and accompanying social sanctions from peers contribute to high turnout in semi-authoritarian elections. In other ongoing projects, I study how national and pan-African identification stimulated through national sports games influence attitudes toward refugees, the relationship between identity, emotions, and belief in fake news, and how researchers can use Facebook as a tool for social science research.

Leah R. Rosenzweig
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Urbanization, City Size, and Public Services

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Alison Post seminar

According to U.N. projections, 86% of global population growth over the next two decades will occur in cities of low and middle-income countries. While social science scholarship typically focuses on megacities, most population growth will occur in small- and medium-sized urban centers. Meanwhile, many countries have decentralized significant policy responsibilities to municipal governments over the last three decades. Expectations derived from the literature on fiscal federalism suggest that this is a cause for concern, as larger cities are thought to deliver public goods more effectively than smaller ones owing to economics of scale. This book project examines the relationship between city size and the types of political demands citizens make of local governments, the ways in which local elected officials respond to these demands, and public service access and quality. Analysis focuses on four large, highly decentralized democracies: Argentina, Brazil, India, and Indonesia. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alison Post
Alison Post is Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines urban politics and policy and other political economy themes, including environmental politics and policy, regulation, and business-government relations. She works principally in Latin America, and recently in India and the United States as well. Post is the author of Foreign and Domestic Investment in Argentina: The Politics of Privatized Infrastructure (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and numerous articles. She is a former President of the Urban and Local Politics section of the American Political Science Association, former Co-Director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley, and currently Chair of the Steering Committee for the Red de Economía Política de America Latina.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Didi Kuo

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Alison Post Associate Professor, University of California Berkeley and Hoover National Fellow Associate Professor, University of California Berkeley and Hoover National Fellow
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Health Economics Seminar: Ryan McDevitt

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Ryan McDevitt

Ryan McDevitt is a professor of economics at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. T

Title: Comparing the Effects of Vertical Integration and Horizontal Consolidation: Evidence from the Dialysis Industry

Abstract: Health care markets have consolidated in recent decades, with increases in both horizontal and vertical ownership ties. We study the implications of shared ownership along both of these dimensions in the U.S. market for outpatient dialysis using a new dataset of mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures between dialysis chains and local partners such as physicians. We first provide novel evidence of the growth and prevalence of joint ventures in dialysis facilities, which nearly tripled from 9.8% in 2005 to 29.8% in 2017. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that joint ventures result in much larger gains in market share compared to acquisitions but relatively similar changes in practices. We also provide evidence that these gains in market share stem largely from business stealing and that patient steering at joint ventures may serve as a barrier to potential entrants.

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Stanford Health Policy

Conference Room 119

615 Crothers Way Encina Commons

 

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Who is a Slave? Health of Children at Risk Based on Inequity, Social Acceptance of Servitude

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Slavery victimizes tens of millions of people worldwide. In 2016, 40 million people were identified as slaves, an estimated 25% percent of them children. Given a broader definition of slavery that includes child labor and child servitude, 152 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 were child laborers as of 2016, and many millions more were involved in some form of slavery-like practice.

Stanford PhD candidate Vincent Jappah, MD, notes in his new article published in the journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival, that the gray area surrounding the acceptance of child servitude in many cultures makes formulating the correct number of victims difficult. Call it servitude or slavery, the practice diminishes the health and social well-being of children and causes harmful ripple effects in their communities as well as to the rest of the world.

Jappah notes that policies to address child servitude and other slavery-like practices are fundamental to global health policy and development. Using a health equity framework can help mitigate the negative impacts of child servitude, in that it requires addressing the diverse factors that impact a person’s ability to meet key health milestones. Irrespective of a person’s race, socio-economic status, financial and physical ability, all global citizens have the right to a healthy life.

The study, “The political economy of child service in Liberia, West Africa,” co-authored by Jappah and Danielle Taana Smith, a professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University, notes that modern slavery is often centered around alleviating one’s own personal poverty and gaining power, even if that means exploiting the children of your own community.

Both Liberian natives, the researchers note that Liberians — like those of other countries including the United States — will often target those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and indigenous peoples.

This often takes place “within groups that in many instances share similar racial identities and physical features,” Jappah said. “Today, the child next door in a neighbor’s home may be deprived of going to school and coerced into performing endless hours of chores, with poor food and living conditions, the inability to leave the house, and the constant fear of violence.”

Jappah notes child servitude can potentially have devastating health consequences, and poses a major health challenge for individuals and their communities. Many victims typically live in unsuitable and unsanitary environments often littered with mosquitos, flies, lice, and other transmitters of disease. These children may also face poor mental health outcomes such as depression, social anxiety and social dysfunction, low self-esteem and failure to meet critical developmental milestones.

These children, as all children do, internalize and, to some extent, normalize their living conditions, and society becomes more acquiescent to such practices, despite their detrimental effects.
Vincent Jappah, MD, MPH
PhD Candidate, Stanford Heath Policy

Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world, having suffered years of civil war and regional conflict. Its human development indicators rank 175 out of 189 countries on the 2019 Human Development Index. The child malnutrition rate is 15% among 5-year-olds and younger and many Liberians lack access to basic needs such as food, water, shelter, education, and health care.

In fact, the authors note, nearly 63% of the people in the West African nation established by freed American slaves live in poverty; 69% of the country’s 5 million people live on less than $3.20 a day.

“A functional economy that ensures that most citizens can earn a living wage does not exist,” the authors wrote. “Extreme poverty in some families, high levels of illiteracy and unemployment, and suboptimal economic activities contribute to child servitude and other forms of child exploitation.”

The children of Liberia are not alone. In societies with inherent instability and ongoing conflict, the practice of child servitude can become accepted as a normal way to make money and centralize power when opportunity and resources are scarce.

Jappah notes that for young children and adolescents, this is the period of forming personality, critical reasoning and developing relationships outside of the home, as well as forming opinions about the world around them. Living in such dehumanizing conditions can result in shame and trauma and often have intergenerational effects. They also have lower levels of education and higher dropout rates, contributing to an ongoing cycle of intergenerational poverty.

“These children, as all children do, internalize and, to some extent, normalize their living conditions, and society becomes more acquiescent to such practices, despite their detrimental effects,” Jappah said.  “These practices are widespread in places where laws are not adequate to address them, or if there are laws, few enforcement mechanisms are in place, or they are not enforced.”

Jappah said Liberians must address their cultural history of exploitation if they want to abolish the practice of child servitude. In addition, addressing the larger issues of inequity and the exclusion of marginalized groups is necessary.

“Throughout human history, we have witnessed clashes among social classes and groups,” Jappah said. “The more inequitable a society is, the more likely it is to be rife with social tensions.”

He concluded that those tensions are evident in developing countries as well as the industrialized nations such as the United States, a Western harbor of child trafficking and slavery. According to the Global Slavery Index, on any given day in 2016 there were 403,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in the United States — or 1.3 victims of slavery for every thousand people in this country.

 “This phenomenon is universal; Liberia is not an exception,” Jappah said.

 

 

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Vincent Jappah, MD, MPH

PhD Candidate
He focuses on public policy, economics, global child and maternal health.
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A new article co-authored by Health Policy PhD candidate Vincent Jappah reveals that the modern drivers of child servitude in Liberia are largely social vulnerability and cultural acceptance of the practice, rather than traditional factors based on race and ethnicity.

How Strong Are International Standards in Practice? Evidence from Cryptocurrency Transactions

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Join the Cyber Policy Center and moderator  Daniel Bateyko in conversation with Karen Nershi for How Strong Are International Standards in Practice?:  Evidence from Cryptocurrency Transactions. 

The rise of cryptocurrency (decentralized digital currency) presents challenges for state regulators given its connection to illegal activity and pseudonymous nature, which has allowed both individuals and businesses to circumvent national laws through regulatory arbitrage. Karen Nershi assess the degree to which states have managed to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges, providing a detailed study of international efforts to impose common regulatory standards for a new technology. To do so, she introduces a dataset of cryptocurrency transactions collected during a two-month period in 2020 from exchanges in countries around the world and employ bunching estimation to compare levels of unusual activity below a threshold at which exchanges must screen customers for money laundering risk. She finds that exchanges in some, but not all, countries show substantial unusual activity below the threshold; these findings suggest that while countries have made progress toward regulating cryptocurrency exchanges, gaps in enforcement across countries allow for regulatory arbitrage. 

This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a months-long series designed to bring researchers, policy makers, scholars and industry professionals together to share research, findings and trends in the cyber policy space. Both in-person (Stanford-affiliation required) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.

Karen Nershi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Stanford Internet Observatory and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). In the summer of 2021, she completed her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in the fields of international relations and comparative politics. Through an empirical lens, her research examines questions of international cooperation and regulation within international political economy, including challenges emerging from the adoption of decentralized digital currency and other new technologies. 

Specific topics Dr. Nershi explores in her research include ransomware, cross-national regulation of the cryptocurrency sector, and international cooperation around anti-money laundering enforcement. Her research has been supported by the University of Pennsylvania GAPSA Provost Fellowship for Innovation and the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics. 

Before beginning her doctorate, Karen Nershi earned a B.A. in International Studies with honors at the University of Alabama. She lived and studied Arabic in Amman, Jordan and Meknes, Morocco as a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow and a Critical Language Scholarship recipient. She also lived and studied in Mannheim, Germany, in addition to interning at the U.S. Consulate General Frankfurt (Frankfurt, Germany).

Dan Bateyko is the Special Projects Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Dan worked previously as a Research Coordinator for The Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, where he investigated Immigration and Customs Enforcement surveillance practices, co-authoring American Dragnet: Data-Drive Deportation in the 21st Century. He has worked at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, the Dangerous Speech Project, and as a research assistant for Amanda Levendowski, whom he assisted with legal scholarship on facial surveillance.

In 2016, he received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. He spent his fellowship year talking with people about digital surveillance and Internet infrastructure in South Korea, China, Malaysia, Germany, Ghana, Russia, and Iceland. His writing has appeared in Georgetown Tech Law Review, Columbia Journalism Review, Dazed Magazine, The Internet Health Report, Council on Foreign Relations' Net Politics, and Global Voices. He is a 2022 Internet Law & Policy Foundry Fellow.

Dan received his Masters of Law & Technology from Georgetown University Law Center (where he received the IAPP Westin Scholar Book Award for excellence in Privacy Law), and his B.A. from Middlebury College.

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Karen Nershi
Seminars

Engagement Outweighs Exposure to Partisan and Unreliable News within Google Search

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Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Alex Stamos in conversation with Ronald E. Robertson for Engagement Outweighs Exposure to Partisan and Unreliable News within Google Search 

This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a months-long series designed to bring researchers, policy makers, scholars and industry professionals together to share research, findings and trends in the cyber policy space. Both in-person (Stanford-affiliation required) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.

If popular online platforms systematically expose their users to partisan and unreliable news, they could potentially contribute to societal issues like rising political polarization. This concern is central to the echo chamber and filter bubble debates, which critique the roles that user choice and algorithmic curation play in guiding users to different online information sources. These roles can be measured in terms of exposure, the URLs seen while using an online platform, and engagement, the URLs selected while on that platform or browsing the web more generally. However, due to the challenges of obtaining ecologically valid exposure data--what real users saw during their regular platform use--studies in this vein often only examine engagement data, or estimate exposure via simulated behavior or inference. Despite their centrality to the contemporary information ecosystem, few such studies have focused on web search, and even fewer have examined both exposure and engagement on any platform. To address these gaps, we conducted a two-wave study pairing surveys with ecologically valid measures of exposure and engagement on Google Search during the 2018 and 2020 US elections. We found that participants' partisan identification had a small and inconsistent relationship with the amount of partisan and unreliable news they were exposed to on Google Search, a more consistent relationship with the search results they chose to follow, and the most consistent relationship with their overall engagement. That is, compared to the news sources our participants were exposed to on Google Search, we found more identity-congruent and unreliable news sources in their engagement choices, both within Google Search and overall. These results suggest that exposure and engagement with partisan or unreliable news on Google Search are not primarily driven by algorithmic curation, but by users' own choices.

Dr. Ronald E Robertson received his Ph.D. in Network Science from Northeastern University in 2021. He was advised by Christo Wilson, a computer scientist, and David Lazer, a political scientist. For his research, Dr. Robertson uses computational tools, behavioral experiments, and qualitative user studies to measure user activity, algorithmic personalization, and choice architecture in online platforms. By rooting his questions in findings and frameworks from the social, behavioral, and network sciences, his goal is to foster a deeper and more widespread understanding of how humans and algorithms interact in digital spaces. Prior to Northeastern, Dr. Robertson obtained a BA in Psychology from the University of California San Diego and worked with research psychologist Robert Epstein at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.

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Alex Stamos

Ronald E. Robertson

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Dr. Ronald E Robertson received his Ph.D. in Network Science from Northeastern University in 2021. He was advised by Christo Wilson, a computer scientist, and David Lazer, a political scientist. For his research, Dr. Robertson uses computational tools, behavioral experiments, and qualitative user studies to measure user activity, algorithmic personalization, and choice architecture in online platforms. By rooting his questions in findings and frameworks from the social, behavioral, and network sciences, his goal is to foster a deeper and more widespread understanding of how humans and algorithms interact in digital spaces.

Prior to Northeastern, Dr. Robertson obtained a BA in Psychology from the University of California San Diego and worked with research psychologist Robert Epstein at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.

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Pamela Murarka

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Accountant
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Pamela Murarka previously worked at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a Senior Business Administrator. She received her bachelor's degree and MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is originally from Cleveland and currently resides in upstate New York.

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Pharmaceutical Economics, Bio-Medical Innovation, and Global Health Beyond COVID-19: Some Reflections

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The combination of COVID-19 and global uncertainties — from wars, cost-of-living crises, high cross-national public debts, and impending global recession — creates new challenges for affordable access to new medicines around the world. Using insights from his research on price regulation, incentives for innovation, and universal health coverage in global bio-pharmaceutical markets, Chirantan Chatterjee will consider how the future may unravel for affordable access to new medicines in the Global North and South.

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Chirantan Chatterjee is an applied microeconomist and a Reader in the Economics of Innovation at the University of Sussex. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Visiting Faculty, IIM Ahmedabad, India. His research interests are in the economics of innovation, pharmaceutical economics, and global health. He has published in top peer-reviewed journals like Management Science, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Research Policy, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Environmental Economics & Management and Social Science & Medicine among others. His new co-edited book on Covid-19 and Grand Challenges for Health, Innovation and Economy is forthcoming in 2023 with World Scientific. Chatterjee's research has in the past been supported by the NSF during his dissertation work at Carnegie Mellon University from where he obtained his PhD in 2011. His current research is supported by the Wellcome Trust India Alliance & Johns Hopkins Alliance for a Healthy World. Chatterjee has also consulted for the United Nations, World Bank, and the World Health Organization on Covid-19, Universal Health Coverage, and Incentives for Medical Innovation. View more on his personal website at www.chirantanchatterjee.com.

Jianan Yang

Via Zoom Webinar

Chirantan Chatterjee Reader in Economics of Innovation, Science Policy Research Unit, Business School, University of Sussex; Visiting Fellow Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Visiting Faculty, IIM Ahmedabad, India
Seminars

Create a Market for Safe, Secure Software

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Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Andrew Grotto, in conversation with L. Jean Camp for Create a Market for Safe, Secure Software. 

This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a months-long series designed to bring researchers, policy makers, scholars and industry professionals together to share research, findings and trends in the cyber policy space. Both in-person (Stanford-affiliation required) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.

Today the security market, particularly in embedded software and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, is a lemons market.  Buyers simply cannot distinguish between secure and insecure products. To enable the market for secure high quality products to thrive,  buyers need to have some knowledge of the contents of these digital products. Once purchased, ensuring a product or software package remains safe requires knowing if these include publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Again this requires knowledge of the contents.  When consumers do not know the contents of their digital products, they can not know if they are at risk and need to take action.

The Software Bill of Materials  is a proposal that was identified as a critical instrument for meeting these challenges and securing software supply chains in the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity} by the Biden Administration (EO 14028. In this presentation Camp will introduce SBOMs, provide examples, and explain the components that are needed in the marketplace for this initiative to meet its potential.

Jean Camp is a Professor at Indiana University with appointments in Informatics and Computer Science.  She is a Fellow of the AAAS (2017), the IEEE (2018), and the ACM (2021).  She joined Indiana after eight years at Harvard’s Kennedy School. A year after earning her doctorate from Carnegie Mellon she served as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. She began her career as an engineer at Catawba Nuclear Station after a double major in electrical engineering and mathematics, followed by a MSEE in optoelectronics at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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Andrew Grotto
L. Jean Camp Professor at Indiana University
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Jonatas Teixeira Prates

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PhD Student, Health Policy
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Jonatas Teixeira Prates is a PhD student in Health Policy. Born in Curitiba, Brazil, Jonatas attended Georgia State University, where he graduated with a BS and an MA, both in Economics. His main research interests are in how the environment – as composed of natural and cultural factors – can affect health, health-related behaviors, and healthcare delivery.

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