Impact of community‑based health insurance on utilisation of preventive health services in rural Uganda: a propensity score matching approach
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
International Journal of Health Economics and Management
Abstract
The effect of voluntary health insurance on preventive health has received limited research
attention in developing countries, even when they suffer immensely from easily preventable
illnesses. This paper surveys households in rural south-western Uganda, which are
geographically serviced by a voluntary Community-based health insurance scheme, and
applied propensity score matching to assess the effect of enrolment on using mosquito nets
and deworming under-five children. We find that enrolment in the scheme increased the
probability of using a mosquito net by 26% and deworming by 18%. We postulate that
these findings are partly mediated by information diffusion and social networks, financial
protection, which gives households the capacity to save and use service more, especially
curative services that are delivered alongside preventive services. This paper provides
more insight into the broader effects of health insurance in developing countries, beyond
financial protection and utilisation of hospital-based services.
Description
Keywords
Community-based health insurance · Enrolment · Preventive health · Inverse probability weighting · Rural Uganda