The African Health Markets for Equity (AHME) Impact Evaluation aims to rigorously evaluate the extent to which transforming the business model of franchised healthcare providers and expanding access to demand-side financing generates effective and cost-effective coverage of priority technologies and interventions amongst the poor. The evaluation is a collaborative effort between Innovations for Poverty Action and researchers from multiple institutions, and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (DFID).
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The AHME intervention package will seek to improve efficiency in private health care delivery by reducing both supply-side and demand-side constraints that patients face in accessing high-quality care. Supply-side intervention will include (1) the social franchising of private clinics in order to improve consistency and quality of care and to reduce costs and (2) quality monitoring linked to capital financing in order to help clinics expand and improve clinical services. On the demand side, AHME will provide technical support to the NHIF as it expands its reach to include Q1 and Q2 households and will aim to increase NHIF registration among AHME clinics and other private provider networks (PPNs). In addition, opportunities to improve the operational efficiency of AHME interventions using information and communication technology (ICT) will be explored. 

Professor Gertler is leading a study to assess the demand for household connection to sewage services and the consequences of connection on housing markets in informal slums in Nairobi, Kenya. The Kenyan Government, through a loan from the World Bank, is installing a municipal sewage system in slums in Nairobi and other big cities in Kenya. However, the costs of household connection to the system are substantial. Gertler's team is implementing an RCT to estimate price elasticity of the demand for connections, the extent to which price elasticities depend on tenant knowledge of landlord investment costs, and the effects of sewer connection on rents and tenant tenure. They also consider complications related to collective action in multi-household compound connections and resident versus non-resident landlords. Results from this study are critical to developing pricing/subsidy and information campaign policies to cost-effectively improve connectivity. 

Implementing partners include the Athi Water Services Board, Nairobi Water, the World Bank and the Water and the Sanitation Program.  The research team includes Paul Gertler (UC Berkeley), Sebastian Galiani (University of Maryland), Alexandra Orsola-Vidal (CEGA, UC Berkeley), Aidan Coville (DIME) and IPA.