Health Insurance in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Scoping Review of the Methods Used to Evaluate its Impact

Stéphanie Degroote, Valery Ridde and Manuela Allegri ()
Additional contact information
Stéphanie Degroote: French Institute For Research on Sustainable Development (IRD), IRD Paris Descartes University (CEPED)
Valery Ridde: French Institute For Research on Sustainable Development (IRD), IRD Paris Descartes University (CEPED)
Manuela Allegri: Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, University Hospital and Medical Faculty, Heidelberg University

Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 2020, vol. 18, issue 6, No 9, 825-840

Abstract: Abstract We conducted a scoping review with the objective of synthesizing available literature and mapping what designs and methods have been used to evaluate health insurance reforms in sub-Saharan Africa. We systematically searched for scientific and grey literature in English and French published between 1980 and 2017 using a combination of three key concepts: “Insurance” and “Impact evaluation” and “sub-Saharan Africa”. The search led to the inclusion of 66 articles with half of the studies pertaining to the evaluation of National Health Insurance schemes, especially the Ghanaian one, and one quarter pertaining to Community-Based Health Insurance and Mutual Health Organization schemes. Sixty-one out of the 66 studies (92%) included were quantitative studies, while only five (8%) were defined as mixed methods. Most studies included applied an observational design (n = 37; 56%), followed by a quasi-experimental (n = 27; 41%) design; only two studies (3%) applied an experimental design. The findings of our scoping review are in line with the observation emerging from prior reviews focused on content in pointing at the fact that evidence on the impact of health insurance is still relatively weak as it is derived primarily from studies relying on observational designs. Our review did identify an increase in the use of quasi-experimental designs in more recent studies, suggesting that we could observe a broadening and deepening of the evidence base on health insurance in Africa over the next few years.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40258-019-00499-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:aphecp:v:18:y:2020:i:6:d:10.1007_s40258-019-00499-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40258

DOI: 10.1007/s40258-019-00499-y

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Health Economics and Health Policy is currently edited by Timothy Wrightson

More articles in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().