November 2019 | CAPABILITY BUILDING
11-12 November 2019 | Johannesburg, South Africa
In early November 2019, the South Africa GHE2 team (Nicholas Stacey and Ijeoma Edoka) held a two day training course with 20 Health policy-makers and analysts, titled 'Introduction to Econometric Methods for Policy and Program Evaluation.
Participants had a variety of different expertise and experiences, and represented a wide range of policy positions in the Government including the National Treasury and the Presidency; all had an interest in health policy making.
The course was informed by meetings and discussions held by the South Africa team with local and national policy-makers, and reflected the health economics capability building needs and interests of the Government. The team also hoped to further the growing interest among South African policy-makers in the application of econometric methods to evaluating large-scale programme- and system-level health interventions, such as the Ideal Clinic Realisation Programme (ICRMP) currently being assessed within GHE2.
Key topics for the training course included sessions on randomised study designs, difference-in-difference and synthetic control methods, as well as lectures on the use of instrumental variables, regression discontinuity design and matching methods. Some of the lectures were given by members of the UK team (Noemi Kreif; Marc Suhrcke).
Feedback from course participants was very positive, with many expressing an interest in taking part in similar training events in the future.
“The workshop was truly informative and I like the fact that examples were provided to assist with understanding the concepts”
“[I liked] The extensive use of examples and reference to published papers really helped understand how the techniques can or should be applied.”
It is hoped that the methods and theory learned during this course can be applied by participants to decision-making in Government, and the teams plan to hold similar short courses in the future to continue to respond to South Africa health policy needs. The course forms an important part of a portfolio of training delivered by the wider GHE2 team to support policy-driven capability building in global health economics.
Many thanks go to Nicholas Stacey, Ijeoma Edoka, Gugu Moyo, Noemi Kreif and Marc Suhrcke for developing and delivering this course, and to all participants for their fantastic engagement.