This data was collected as part of a project designed to study the choices parents made about their children’s healthcare in Bamako, Mali, and the response of those decisions to different healthcare policies – specifically free care at the local clinic, and health worker visits. These questions were studied in the context of a randomized controlled trial, in which different households were assigned to one of three experimental groups - which was provided with free care, health worker visits or both, or to a control group. The data comes in the form of three STATA files: (1) Roster_ESRC.dta, (2) Health_Calendar_ESRC.dta, (3) Objective_Health_ESRC.dta, along with the following associated documentation: (1) Readme File, (2) Roster variable list, (3) Health calendar variable list; (4) Objective health variable list; (5) Health_Survey.xls, which includes the survey instruments for the health calendar and objective health data; (6) Roster.xls, which includes the survey instruments for the roster data; (7) The English translation of the training manual provided to surveyors. This project conducts a randomized controlled trial of two health care policies in a peri-urban region of Bamako, Mali: the provision of free primary care, and regular visits from health workers who teach mothers good practices and accompany children to the doctor The authors will use this experiment to learn about the effects of these policies on the use of healthcare resources by the mothers of young children - in particular when they seek medical care, who they seek care from, and the use of preventive measures such as mosquito nets and water purification. The results will also be used to study the importance of different types of constraints that may govern the healthcare decisions of poor families, such as lack of available credit, or lack of knowledge of good healthcare practice. The project will improve understanding of how the abolition of user fees can alleviate these constraints, and whether health workers can counteract some of the negative implications associated with providing healthcare entirely for free. Ethical approval for this project has been obtained from Brown University and the Comite National D’Ethique Pour La Sante et Les Sciences De La Vie in Mali.
The research design took advantage of the second planned roll-out wave of the Action for Health program in late 2012. Mali Health conducted a census in their new expansion area in summer 2012 to enumerate all eligible families based on geography, the presence of children under five years of age (or a pregnant mother), and the proxy means test. Data was collected in two survey rounds in 2012 and 2013 in the rainy season (August-October). Households identified by the Mali Health census were revisited for the baseline survey in 2012. All households that were found at baseline were included in the random assignment to the different treatment groups. This data file covers the second survey round in 2013. Data was collected at the level of the household, defined as all persons who identify the same individual as their household head.
