Unit | Household Economics and Health Systems Research

The project aims to address two related public health challenges in Ghana and in Tanzania: how to better identify and reach excluded population to include them in financing protection mechanisms; and how to improve health system accountability mechanisms and civil society governance to support the implementation of inclusive and sustainable social health protection systems. The project will contribute to improving access to better quality, more accountable and better governed health services. Results are expected to identify opportunities or challenges for governance, in particular the involvement of civil society, in enhancing design and implementation of social health protection. Read more.

The HAT MEPP project is an international, multidisciplinary research project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support planning and implementation of Gambian HAT interventions through the use of mathematical modelling predictions and economic analyses. Our group is part of a team of modellers and economists, led by the University of Warwick, working with key partners in HAT-affected countries to develop regional, policy-ready modelling frameworks and produce predictive results that support decision-makers in the national control programmes. Read more

Despite a remarkable increase in research on early childhood development worldwide, internationally validated measures of child development remain scarce. The Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI) were designed to provide a population-level measure of early childhood development (ECD) for children from birth to age three. As its name suggests, the CREDI relies exclusively on caregiver reports and therefore focuses primarily on milestones and behaviours that are easy for caregivers to understand, observe, and describe. To date, the CREDI has been used in more than 20 countries. More information on the project website

Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems are essential to produce timely and reliable vital statistics on births, deaths and causes of death to inform public health policy; respond to emerging health needs and epidemics; and document progress towards Sustainable Development Goals. Since 2015, Swiss TPH has collaborated with the Bloomberg Data for Health Initiative (D4H) to strengthen CRVS systems in 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Our role is to think “out of the box” to find ways to improve CRVS system’s performance through research and innovation. For more information, visit the website of the Bloomberg D4H Initiative.

Reliable and comparable data on the levels and causes of mortality are cornerstones for building a solid evidence base for health policy, planning, monitoring and evaluation. In settings where the cause of death cannot be medically determined, such as deaths occuring in the community, verbal autopsy (VA) can be used. VA uses information obtained from the caregivers of recently deceased persons, interpreted by physicians or analysed by computer algorithms, to determine the most likely cause of death - valid for application at the population level.
In order to standarise VA methods, quality assessment and combination of data from different sources, international collaboration is required and the WHO has established the “WHO VA Reference Group” (VARG). Visit the VARG website for more information.

This interdisciplinary research project investigates knowledge, practices and applications related to the improvement of health and healthcare which have been developed or designed in Africa, and have become – or have the potential to become – relevant to questions of health globally.

A collaborative project between the University of Basel, Swiss Institute for Tropical and Public Health, and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL), it brings together experts in African history, public health and urban planning working with African partners in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Côte d’Ivoire. It is a Sinergia project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Visit the project website