Efficient and Responsive Community-Based Health Insurance

• Does affiliation with a community-based micro health insurance unit improve access to healthcare?
• What impact does community-based micro health insurance have on health-related financial exposure?
• What other impacts does community-based micro health insurance have on socioeconomic characteristics?
• How can implementation of a community-based micro health insurance scheme be made more efficient?

Partner organizations

Erasmus University Rotterdam leads the project and is responsible for its overall coordination.

University of Cologne is Germany's largest university, hosting a Department of Co-operative studies at the forefront of micro and community-based health insurance schemes qualitative research.

BAIF Development Research Foundation is a grassroots nongovernmental organization in India committed to the development of rural India working in more than 45,000 villages. This 50-year-old charitable trust will be involved in the field research and implementation and monitoring of the project.

NIDAN is a non-profit grassroots organization active in six districts across Bihar, Delhi and Rajasthan. NIDAN promotes sustainable collective business models, thrift and credit programs and micro-insurance schemes. NIDAN is an implementing partner and will be primarily responsible of implementation the community-based health insurance scheme in Bihar.

Shramik Bharti reaches of 50,000 families, with aims to eradicate poverty and empower the poor and underprivileged through structured initiatives in the fields of micro-inance, preventive healthcare and democratic local self-governance. Along with Nidam and BAIF, Shramik Bharti will manage implementation of field experiments, collection of data and dissemination of the results.

The Micro Insurance Academy (MIA) is an Indian (Delhi-based) Charitable Trust dedicated to training, research, and advisory services for microinsurance units serving the poor. MIA will support BAIF, NIDAN, and Shramik Bharti in their implementation of community-based health insurance schemes. Additionally, MIA is carrying out the impact evaluation of these schemes.

Product

Community-based health insurance. Product details to be determined.

Evaluation design

Experimental: randomized rollout of community-based health insurance scheme across three project locations. Three waves of household surveys and focus groups will take place across three locations in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India.

Project website(s)