Jun 15, 2017

A research study by Harsha Thirumurthy about the impact of the US President’s Malaria Initiative on child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa was published by PLOS Medicine. The study, The US President’s Malaria Initiative and under-5 child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: A difference-in-differences analysis, was published on June 13.

Thirumurthy is a Carolina Population Center Faculty Fellow and is an Associate Professor in UNC’s Health Policy and Management department.

The paper was led by Thirumurthy’s PhD student Aleksandra Jakubowski, who is also a Research Assistant at the Carolina Population Center. CPC Fellow Gustavo Angeles, Research Assistant Professor in UNC’s Maternal and Child Health department, co-authored the paper. The paper uses DHS and other population-representative data from 32 countries.

PLOS Medicine issued a press release about the study:

US aid to combat malaria in Africa is associated with reduced risk of childhood mortality.

The release begins: “In a study published in PLOS Medicine, Aleksandra Jakubowski of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US, and colleagues show that funding from the US President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) in 19 sub-Saharan African countries was associated with a 16% reduction in the annual risk of under-five child mortality in the years following introduction of the Initiative.”