Essays on Health and Development: Evidence from Indonesia and South Africa
Doctoral thesis
Date of Examination:2022-03-14
Date of issue:2022-10-18
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Sebastian Vollmer
Referee:Prof. Dr. Sebastian Vollmer
Referee:Prof. Dr. Andreas Landmann
Sponsor:I acknowledge funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project RTG 1723.
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Abstract
English
The global burden of disease changed substantially over the past decades. The burden stemming from non-communicable diseases has been rising, particularly in middle-oncome countries, and zoonotic pandemics such as HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 hit health systems around the globe. As a consequence, health care systems and societies face new challenges, such as the need to update health beliefs and behavior, and the need to support the groups most vulnerable to these changes. In this doctoral thesis, I aim to contribute to the understanding of these challenges with four essays. The first essay describes health beliefs and preventive health behavior in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in Aceh, Indonesia, and underlines the role of information and information sources. The second essay shows how text messages can increase preventive health behavior in the context of hypertension and diabetes screening in Aceh, but also demonstrates that health beliefs might be harder to change. Essay number three shows that symptoms of mental disorders are more prevalent in vulnerable population groups in Aceh, and describes the correlation of these symptoms with economic and health care outcomes. The last essay highlights to which extent different types of state support influence how children’s education is affected by parental eligibility for HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa.
Keywords: Development Economics; Global Health; South Africa; Indonesia; Health Behavior