City: Chicago, IL

Publisher/Institution: The University of Chicago

Abstract: Low birth weight is a global health problem, especially in developing countries. Approximately 16% of all new-borns in developing countries were born with low birth weight. Motivated by this troublesome fact,this research evaluates policies that target maternal and children’s health in low-resource settings. The following three essays analyze community-based and household-based health interventions. Program evaluation is important to inform future policy, and more importantly, to compare policies in order to determine the most effective strategies to improve birth outcomes in developing countries. Indonesia has implemented both community-based and household-based interventions. The three essays in this research evaluate the following three programs. The first two essays evaluate two recent programs: a household-based program, Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH), and a community-based program, PNPM Generasi Sehat dan Cerdas (Generasi ). The third essay evaluates the ‘Midwife in the Village’ ( Bidan di Desa) program. The ‘Midwife in the Village’ program is a community-based program that was implemented in the 1980s to provide each village with a trained midwife to provide prenatal care and delivery assistance. The other two programs, PKH and Generasi, were piloted in 2007. PKH is a household Conditional Cash-Transfer (CCT) program, while Generasi, functions a community CCT program; the community CCT program provides villages with block grants to fund activities that promote health and education.