How effective and fair is user fee removal? Evidence from Zambia using a pooled synthetic control.

Despite its high political interest, the impact of removing user charges for health care in low-income settings remains a debatable issue. We try to clear up this contentious issue by estimating the short-term effects of a policy change that occurred in 2006 in Zambia, when 54 of 72 districts removed fees. We use a pooled synthetic control method in order to estimate the causal impact of the policy on health care use, the provider chosen, and out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Association of mGFR of the Remaining Kidney Divided by Its Volume before Donation with Functional Gain in mGFR among Living Kidney Donors.

Background And Objectives: The predictors of long-term renal function in living kidney donors are currently discussed. Our objectives were to describe the predictors of functional gain of the remaining kidney after kidney donation. We hypothesized that GFR of the remaining kidney divided by volume of this kidney (rk-GFR/vol) would reflect the density of functional nephrons and be inversely associated with functional gain of the remaining kidney.

Estimating unbiased economies of scale of HIV prevention projects: a case study of Avahan.

Governments and donors are investing considerable resources on HIV prevention in order to scale up these services rapidly. Given the current economic climate, providers of HIV prevention services increasingly need to demonstrate that these investments offer good 'value for money'. One of the primary routes to achieve efficiency is to take advantage of economies of scale (a reduction in the average cost of a health service as provision scales-up), yet empirical evidence on economies of scale is scarce.