What’s Influencing Health Aid?

1. What’s Influencing Health Aid? Jessica Mitchell jm2866a@student.american.edu American University School of International Service

2. Research Question & Research hypothesis • Research Question/s • What variables have a relationship with official development assistance for health disbursements? • Research hypothesis • Is there a relationship between health aid and burden of disease?

3. Literature Review • Theory and Findings from Jeremy Shiffman, “Donor Funding Priorities for Communicable Disease Control in the Developing World,” Health Policy and Planning 21, no. 6 (2006). • Theory: Donor health funding for high burden diseases has a relationship with recipient need, provider interest, or global policy. • Findings : Evidence supports global policy framework

4. Literature Review cont. • Theory and Findings from Nirmala Ravishankar, Paul Gubbins, Rebecca J. Cooley, Katherine Leach-Kemon, Catherine M. Michaud, Dean T. Jamison, and Christopher J. L. Murray, “Financing of Global Health: Tracking Development Assistance for Health from 1990 to 2007,” Lancet 373 (2009). • Goal: Track development aid for health (DAH) by various indicators, including burden of disease and GDP. • Findings : Negative relationship between DAH and GDP and positive relationship between DAH and disease burden. However, donor funding varies substantially at the same level of burden

5. Data • Unit of analysis/study : country • Source of the data: CRS, WHO, UN DESA, and WDI • Reliability of the data: fairly reliable • Dependent variable/s • gross official development aid for health disbursements per capita in 2009 • Unit of measurement is constant 2008 USD millions and LOM of Y variable interval-ratio • Independent Variables • communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions in 2004 ; Units: DALYS per capita; LOM: interval-ratio

6. Independent Variables, cont. • Independent Variables • noncommunicable diseases in 2004; Units: DALYs per capita; LOM: interval-ratio • injuries 2004; Units: DALYs per capita; LOM: interval-ratio • under 5 mortality rate in 2008; Units: number of mortalities per 1,000 live births; LOM: interval-ratio • adult mortality for females in 2008; Units: mortalities per 1,000 adult females; LOM: interval-ratio • adult mortality for males in 2008; Units: mortalities per 1,000 adult males; LOM: interval-ratio • GDP per capita in 2008; Units: current USD; LOM: interval-ratio

7. Descriptive Statistics: Central Tendency

8. Descriptive Statistics cont. • All variables uni-modal, but not normally distributed. • Central tendency not extremely credible because there are serious discrepancies between mean and median. • Range of ODA for health per capita: $0 – $245.51 • Some missing data, but not a substantial amount.

9. Bivariate Analysis

10. Regression AnalysisDependent Variable: Health ODA Disbursements per Capita (log) • Interpretations: • i) All of the independent variables are significant, with t-values >1.96. All three X variables have a moderate, positive relationship when they are the only X variable. • ii) Notice how these X variables become moderately, negatively associated with Y when combined with other X variables in a model. This suggest colinearity. • iii) These high VIF scores confirm colinearity in models 3 and 5. • iv) Models 1, 2, and 4 have the highest Adjusted R- Squared in combination with low colinearity.

11. Residuals

12. Findings & Policy Implications of the research • Findings: • In general, there is a relationship between health ODA and disease burden. However, combining different categories of DALYs in the model weakens the model because of colinearity. • Note: The relationship between health ODA and disease burden could still vary substantially between countries. • What are the policy implications of your findings? • Policies to strengthen determinations of health ODA by disease burden and to promote equitable disbursements of health ODA among countries according to disease burden.