Annex 4
ESRC RESEARCH PORTFOLIO—HIGHLIGHTS
DFID—ESRC Scheme—Launched August 2005
This £13 million joint research grants
scheme aims to fund world class scientific research on issues
relating to economic development and quality of life in less developed
countries with the potential for impact on policy and practice
for poverty reduction. This focuses in particular on:
— understanding and creating the socio-economic
conditions that are necessary to facilitate the alleviation of
poverty;
— new theoretical and conceptual thinking
about the nature of development and the conditions under which
development and poverty alleviation can be delivered;
— methodological challenges posed by
international comparative work in different social, economic and
cultural settings; and
— paucity of datasets, especially micro-level
or longitudinal data.
EXAMPLES OF
AWARDS
Identifying barriers to TB diagnosis and treatment
under a new rapid diagnostic scheme, Dr Luis Cuevas, Liverpool
School of Tropical Medicine
Start Date: 01/04/2008 End Date: 31/03/2011
Tuberculosis is the main cause of adult death
due to infection in developing countries and its diagnosis in
these settings requires the examination of multiple sputum samples
using smear microscopy. Although smear microscopy was described
more than 100 years ago, front line facilities still rely on it
as a low cost, relatively simple and robust diagnostic test in
the absence of alternatives. But it has substantial limitations:
it identifies only 40-75 of adults with pulmonary tuberculosis
and the examination of multiple specimens is costly in time and
economic expense for both services and patients. Individuals often
have to travel long distances and sell personal assets to access
services. Many patients are unaware of the number of days required
for diagnosis and, as several visits are necessary, are unable
to adhere. As patients can only initiate treatment if they have
been formally diagnosed, improving the efficiency of the process
is crucial for increasing access to treatment. Accelerated diagnostic
approaches are recognised as a promising way of improving TB diagnosis
by the Stop TB Partnership's Task Force on Retooling and are likely
to become global policy for TB control in the future. This research
team has designed an accelerated scheme in which specimens are
collected one hour apart from each other. This scheme provides
test results on the day of consultation and those who tested positive
can be referred for treatment within the centre, or elsewhere,
within a few hours. Following promising findings in preliminary
studies, the WHO/TDR is undertaking a multi-country evaluation,
coordinated by LSTM, to validate the scheme and inform both national
and international policy. This research is sensitive to the necessity
of identifying the non-financial barriers (including poverty,
gender, attitude health workers, perceptions of health services)
surrounding patients' uptake of diagnosis and treatment when assessed
with a new accelerated diagnostic approach.
Demographic and poverty dynamics in an African
population with high AIDS mortality and implications for social
policy, Professor Ian Timaeus, LSHTM, Professor Jane Falkingham,
Professor Julian May
Start Date: 09/10/2006 End Date: 08/12/2009
The ADaPT (AIDS, Demographic and Poverty Dynamics)
project aims to: improve the understanding of the impact of deaths
of working-age adults on household welfare, households' responses,
and the determinants of differential vulnerability and resilience
examine the effects of demographic change, including the AIDS
epidemic, on poverty dynamics across the life course in South
Africa assess the social policy interventions designed to mitigate
the impact of the epidemic and their distributional implications
across the life course.The project will analyse data from two
large panel datasets from KwaZulu-Natal. The project will investigate
whether adult deaths primarily affect household welfare by aggravating
money poverty or in other ways. Finally, micro-simulation will
be adopted to model the impact of different social benefits and
services that might mitigate the impact of the AIDS epidemic.
Impact Evaluation of Performance-based Contracting
for General Health and HIV/AIDS Services in Rwanda,
Dr Stefano Bertozzi, National Institute of Public
Health, Mexico, Professor Paul Gertler, Professor Sergio Bautista,
Dr Paulin Basinga
The global shortage of human resources for health
care delivery is reaching crisis conditions in the poorest countries.
The deficit of well trained and highly motivated health care workers
in developing countries is a reflection of the high levels of
absenteeism and worker emigration to richer countries. This research
will provide some of the first rigorous empirical evidence on
whether Performance Based Contracting (PBC) for health services
is a feasible method for improving quality of care, increasing
access to quality health care services, and significantly increasing
health outcomes. It will also be the first study of PBC in the
African context. The knowledge generated by this research will
not only fundamentally serve the Rwandan government, World Bank
and other donor agencies as they prepare for expansion of PBC
for health services within Rwanda, but also the international
community as it searches for more effective means for addressing
the human resource crisis in health care.
ESRC-HEWLETT SCHEME
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Hewlett)
and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) have formed
a strategic partnership to provide a new joint funding scheme.
This scheme aims to enhance the quality and impact of social science
research addressing the key international development issue of
how population dynamics and reproductive health outcomes impact
economic growth and poverty reduction. The new scheme will fund
world class scientific research on issues relating to economic
development and quality of life in less developed countries with
the potential for impact on policy and practice for economic development
and improved reproductive health. This joint scheme has a total
budget of £2 million over four years.
EXAMPLES OF
AWARDS
Effects of Reproductive Health on Poverty in Malawi,
Dr Marcos Vera Hernandez, Dr Emla Fitzsimons, Dr Alice Mesnard,
Professor Hans-Peter Kohler, Professor Jere Behrman, Professor
Constantine Meghir, Professor Orazio Attanasio, Dr Winford Masanjala
Start Date: 01/01/08 End Date: 31/12/10
The challenge of this research is to disentangle
the causal effect of reproductive health on poverty.
Research hypotheses being tested include:
— Parental HIV-infection reduces child
schooling but may reduce or increase child work. As a consequence
Volunteering Counselling and Testing might also increase schooling
and affect child work.
— Collectively-generated information
about reproductive health increases contraceptive use and reduces
HIV infection of women.
Enhancing the economic, health and social capabilities
of highly vulnerable youth, Dr Kelly Hallman,
Start Date: 01/12/07 End Date: 30/11/10
Young people in South Africa face high risks
of HIV, teenage pregnancy, school dropout, and unemployment, and
are further disadvantaged by the actual or potential loss of one
or both parents to HIV and extreme conditions of poverty. These
circumstances make the transition from childhood to adulthood
especially difficult, and many of the most disadvantaged young
people are in danger of falling even farther behind socially and
economically due to illness, stigma, and the loss of key supportive
adults.
The proposed research aims address the specific
conditions of young people's lives and testing an intervention
that includes strategies to help young people build economic assets
and protect themselves against HIV and early pregnancy.
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