The objectives of the Rwanda Great Lakes Emergency Sexual and Gender Based Violence and Womens Health Project are to: (i) expand the provision of services to mitigate the short and medium term impact of sexual and gender based violence; and (ii) expand utilization of a package of health interventions targeted to poor and vulnerable females.
... See More + The project contains three components the first being the holistic support for survivors of sexual and gender based violence and violence prevention. This component will support delivery of an integrated package of short and medium term assistance to survivors of SGBV at both the community and health facility level while promoting gender equality, behavioral change, and violence prevention in the intervention zones of each participating country. The second component is being implemented in DRC and Burundi where service gaps and quality deficiencies are acute. The third component for regional and national knowledge sharing, research and capacity building will fund activities which will bring together stakeholders from the three participating countries as a community of practitioners who are embarking on a common agenda.
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Malaria continues to be a prominent global public health challenge, in part because of the slow population adoption of recommended preventive and curative behaviors.
... See More + This paper tests the effectiveness of two service delivery models designed to promote recommended behaviors, including prompt treatment seeking for febrile illness, in Odisha India. The tested modules include supportive supervision of community health workers and community mobilization promoting appropriate health seeking. Program effects were identified through a randomized cluster trial comprising 120 villages from two purposively chosen malaria-endemic districts. Significant improvements were measured in the reported utilization of bed nets in both intervention arms vis-à-vis the control. Although overall rates of treatment seeking were equal across the study arms, treatment seeking from community health workers was higher in both intervention arms and care seeking from trained providers also increased with a substitution away from untrained providers. Further, fever cases in both treatments were more likely to have received timely medical treatment (within 24 hours) from a skilled provider. The study arm with supportive supervision was particularly effective in shifting care seeking to community health workers and ensuring prompt diagnosis and treatment. A community-based intervention combining the supportive supervision of community health workers with intensive community mobilization can be effective in shifting care seeking and increasing preventive behavior, and thus may be used to strengthen the national malaria control program.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6901 JUN 01, 2014
Das, Ashis; Friedman, Jed; Kandpal, Eeshani; Ramana, GNV; Das Gupta, R K; Pradhan, Madan M; Govindaraj, Ramesh
Strong boy-bias and its consequences for young and unborn girls have been widely documented for Asia. This paper considers a country in Sub-Saharan Africa and finds that parental gender preferences do affect fertility behavior and shape traditional social institutions with negative effects on adult women's health and well-being.
... See More + Using individual-level data for Nigeria, the paper shows that, compared to women with first-born sons, women with first-born daughters have (and desire) more children and are less likely to use contraceptives. Women with daughters among earlier-born children are also more likely to have shorter birth intervals, a behavior medically known to increase the risk of child and maternal mortality. Moreover, they are more likely to end up in a polygynous union, to be divorced, and to be head of the household. The preference for sons is also supported by child fostering patterns in which daughters are substitutes for foster girls, while the same does not hold for sons and foster boys. These results can partly explain excess female mortality among adult women in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6869 MAY 01, 2014
Reports in both the national and international media and anecdotal evidence indicate that the prevalence of crime and violence is high in PNG, and presents an important obstacle to long-term development.
... See More + A growing body of literature and data on the issue identify a diverse range of forms of crime and violence; from violence in the household to violent conflict between clans, and various forms of interpersonal violence. This violence has been linked to various factors, ranging from historical and cultural factors, to, more recently, economic drivers. Conflict and violence have historically been an integral part of social life in PNG. This briefing note presents an analysis of the drivers of violence and crime in PNG. An extensive data and literature review was undertaken by a World Bank team, following a scoping mission to PNG in December 2011. A follow-up mission to Port Moresby in October 2012 which included individual consultations with stakeholders as well as an experts meeting on Conflict and Fragility helped test and refine the analysis. The brief begins with a description of the role of conflict in PNG society, and of traditional mechanisms for managing conflict. Next, it discusses key stresses that increase the risk of violence in PNG. The fourth section examines how these stresses affect the capacity of institutions in PNG to manage the conflicts that come with rapid social and economic changes. The brief concludes with a summary of gaps in the current understanding of the stresses and drivers of violence in PNG.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 75058 MAY 01, 2014
At the request of the Prime Minister's office, between 2011-2013, the World Bank conducted a study to understand the social and economic costs of crime and violence in Papua New Guinea.
... See More + The purpose of the study was to feed a national conversation about crime and violence and inform policy directions and program interventions. The findings of the study are summarized in this research and dialogue series. This brief outlines the policy and programming recommendations that emerge from the research. The recommendations are intended to provide information, possible policy approaches towards an ongoing dialogue on the issue of crime and violence and that they will fuel a growing coalition of state and civil society actors for an integrated response.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 88545 MAY 01, 2014
Argentina's Plan Nacer provides insurance for maternal and child health care to uninsured families. The program allocates funding to provinces based on enrollment of beneficiaries and adds performance incentives based on indicators of the use and quality of maternal and child health care services and health outcomes.
... See More + The provinces use these resources to pay health facilities to provide maternal and child health care services to beneficiaries. This paper analyzes the impact of Plan Nacer on birth outcomes. The analysis uses data from the universe of birth records in seven Argentine provinces for 2004 to 2008 and exploits the geographic phasing in of Plan Nacer over time. The paper finds that the program increases the use and quality of prenatal care as measured by the number of visits and the probability of receiving a tetanus vaccine. Beneficiaries' probability of low birth-weight is estimated to be reduced by 19 percent. Beneficiaries have a 74 percent lower chance of in-hospital neonatal mortality in larger facilities and approximately half this reduction comes from preventing low birth weight and half from better postnatal care. The analysis finds that the cost of saving a disability-adjusted life year through the program was $814, which is highly cost-effective compared with Argentina's $6,075 gross domestic product per capita over this period. Although there are small negative spillover effects on prenatal care utilization of non-beneficiary populations in clinics covered by Plan Nacer, no spillover is found on their birth outcomes.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6884 MAY 01, 2014
Gertler, Paul; Giovagnoli, Paula; Martinez, Sebastian
Gender-based violence (GBV) is widespread, with adverse repercussions for individual wellbeing and development more broadly. Yet, knowledge on what works to prevent GBV is limited.
... See More + Drawing on lessons from three impact evaluations supported by the World Bank; this brief highlights opportunities for addressing GBV in economic empowerment interventions. Interventions that address gender norms and engage men have shown some promise from a small number of World Bank evaluations. It is; however, clear that more rigorous impact evaluations are needed to better understand how to effectively prevent GBV, especially in developing countries.
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The report finds that nutrition interventions rarely target adolescent girls, fathers, or elderly women. The report stresses that gender inclusive nutrition programs will ideally increase: (1) women's household autonomy; (2) household support for the woman and her own and her children's nutrition; (3) community support for the woman and her own and her children's nutrition; and include (4) help for adolescent girls.
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The development objective of the Youth Inclusion and Social Accountability Project for Georgia is to increase the participation of youth in demand-side governance, social accountability, and civic engagement at the municipal level, leading to greater youth inclusion.
... See More + Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: (1) notifying the local construction and environment inspectorates and communities of upcoming activities; (2) ensuring that the demolition debris is kept in controlled area and sprayed with water mist to reduce debris dust; (3) ensuring that during operations the engine covers of generators, air compressors, and other powered mechanical equipment are kept closed, and equipment is placed as far away from residential areas as possible; (4) identifying waste collection and disposal pathways and sites for all major waste types expected from demolition and construction activities; (5) implementing the approved land acquisition plan and framework (if required by the project); and (6) ensuring safe and continuous access to office facilities, shops, and residences during renovation activities, if the buildings stay open for the public.
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The development objective of the Youth Inclusion and Social Accountability Project for Georgia is to increase the participation of youth in demand-side governance, social accountability, and civic engagement at the municipal level, leading to greater youth inclusion.
... See More + Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: (1) notifying the local construction and environment inspectorates and communities of upcoming activities; (2) ensuring that the demolition debris is kept in controlled area and sprayed with water mist to reduce debris dust; (3) ensuring that during operations the engine covers of generators, air compressors, and other powered mechanical equipment are kept closed, and equipment is placed as far away from residential areas as possible; (4) identifying waste collection and disposal pathways and sites for all major waste types expected from demolition and construction activities; (5) implementing the approved land acquisition plan and framework (if required by the project); and (6) ensuring safe and continuous access to office facilities, shops, and residences during renovation activities, if the buildings stay open for the public.
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The objective of the Youth Corps Project for Kazakhstan is to promote young people's community engagement and life skills through a community-based service learning program, especially for vulnerable youth.
... See More + There are three components to the project, the first component being support community-based service learning and life skills. This component will incorporate the five elements discussed above (community engagement, initiative, support system, safe place, and recognition for positive behavior) and implementation will follow the protocol and monitoring framework outlined in the Project Operations Manual (POM). A coordinating agency will be responsible for overseeing the daily administration of component one activities, which are organized along four sub-components: (i) subproject grants and subsistence stipends for community-based service learning, (ii) life skills development and project management training, and (iii) outreach to vulnerable young people, and (iv) coordination, communication, and accountability. The second component is the support institutional development of the committee on youth affairs for youth policy implementation. Finally, the third component is the project management, monitoring, and evaluation activities.
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The objective of the Second Kosovo Youth Development Project (KYDP2) is: (i) promote social cohesion though inter-ethnic collaboration among young people; and (ii) improve economic opportunities and sustainable access to youth services in Kosovo.
... See More + The changes include reallocation of proceeds and the extension of closing date. The reallocation and extension of closing date are necessary in order to: (a) utilize unallocated funds to implement business development and vocational education trainings for marginalized youth, particularly Kosovo Roma youth, and (b) finalize ongoing project impact evaluation activities.
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This South Asia gender initiative newsletter includes the following headings: gender-based violence in South Asia; harnessing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to end violence against women in Nepal; technical and financial support to address gender based violence; and the promise of expanding one-stop crisis centers in Bangladesh.
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This paper is the first to show that excess mortality among adult women can be partly explained by strong preference for male children, the same cultural norm widely known to cause excess mortality before birth or at young ages.
... See More + Using pooled individual-level data for India, the paper compares the age structure and anemia status of women by the sex of their first-born and uncovers several new findings. First, the share of living women with a first-born girl is a decreasing function of the women's age at the time of the survey. Second, while there are no systematic differences at the time of birth, women with a first-born girl are significantly more likely to develop anemia when young (under the age of 30) and these differences disappear for older women. Moreover, among those in the older age group, they appear to be significantly better off in terms of various predetermined characteristics. These findings are consistent with a selection effect in which maternal and adult mortality is higher for women with first-born girls, especially the poor and uneducated with limited access to health care and prenatal sex diagnostic technologies. To ensure the desired sex composition of children, these women resort to a fertility behavior medically known to increase their risk of death. The observed sex ratios for first births imply that 2.2-8.4 percent of women with first-born girls are 'missing' because of son preference between the ages of 30 and 49.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6802 MAR 01, 2014
For young adults living in countries with AIDS epidemics, getting an HIV test may influence near-term decisions, such as when to leave school, when to marry, and when to have a first child.
... See More + These behaviors, which define the transition from adolescence to adulthood, have long-term implications on well-being and directly affect a person's risk of contracting HIV. Using an experimental design embedded in a panel survey from Malawi, this study assesses the impact of voluntary counseling and testing of young adults for HIV on these decisions. The results show negligible intent-to-treat effect of HIV testing on behaviors. There is some suggestive evidence on differential response by wealth and by prior beliefs about one's status.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6825 MAR 01, 2014