HEALTH EDUCATION IMPACT IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AND HAITI

Health Education impact in Dominican Republic and Haiti



TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background of the study4

Problem Statement4

Research Aims and Objectives4

Rationale/ Nature of the study5

Limitations of the Study5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW6

Haiti in Historical Context6

Unrest Throttles Haiti's Development6

Haiti's Tattered Infrastructure7

Human Rights8

Chapter 3: Methodology13

Research Design13

Literature selection criteria13

Search techniques13

Keywords used13

Theoretical Framework14

Chapter 4: Anticipated Results and Conclusion15

References17

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Health and education outcomes have been the subject of many economic studies because of their intrinsic value as well as their impact on productivity in the economy. Different countries have different health and education outcomes, indicating the need for country-level studies to try to understand the determinants of these outcomes in specific environments. This thesis consists of three essays on health and education outcomes in two developing countries: Burkina Faso and Madagascar. The first essay examines the relationship between mother's education and child health in Burkina Faso. Household survey data from the Burkina Faso 2007 survey of living standards is used. Endogeneity issues arise from the potential correlation between the errors terms in the mother's education equation and the child health equation.

To address this endogeneity problem, data from an education policy change that occurred in 1995 in Burkina Faso are used to construct instrument variables. The results show that mother's education positively and significantly affects child HAZ (strong significance) and WHZ (weak significance) in the OLS with fixed effects methods estimation. However, when instrumental variables estimation is used, the mother's education coefficient becomes negative and insignificant in the HAZ regression while it is positive and strongly significant in the WHZ regression. Turning to the pathways, household expenditures and mother's bargaining power are the suggested pathways through which mother's education affects child HAZ. The pathways results for WHZ are quite puzzling, negative for all three pathways investigated, income, health knowledge, and bargaining power, significant for income and bargaining power. (Mavis, 2001, 93)

Global initiatives in public health education continue to surge to the forefront, as our world becomes more interconnected due to modern transportation, greater reliance of exports, increased immigration, a global business market and the health inequalities or social injustices of others. In today's interconnected world, global health has become more relevant to health education. Higher education institutions have a responsibility to prepare future public health educators and educated citizens by integrating basic principles of global health to their public health education curriculum. Ensuring future health educators have global experience, may ensure they are working towards social responsibility, health disparities and improving the health of others worldwide. The millennium provides some of the greatest accomplishments and improvements in technology and global health. With death rates falling steadily, more progress has been made in population health, particularly in developing countries, during the last 50 years. In the past three decades, nearly every sector, including health, has undergone a transformation in the way information is collected, managed and transmitted. (Mason, 2004, 1103)

More than 700 people died and 11,000 are now sick from cholera in Haiti; Save the Children warns that educating people about ...