Early childhood health interventions have ‘big, multi-generation impacts’
In the late ‘90s, Tania Barham, who is now an associate professor of economics at CU Vlogƽ, was in Yemen working as an economist for the World Bank, which had teamed up with UNICEF to improve that country’s health, education and water.
But something was missing: evidence.
“There was little data to understand if a project was successful or not,” she recalled.
That realization persuaded Barham to go back to school, earn a PhD and research how to bring people out of poverty over the long term.
Much of Barham’s work now draws upon data from the Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning Programme in Bangladesh, which tracks key metrics. Barham’s recent research found that the program improves people’s height, cognition and test scores.
But the most important finding, says Barham, was that these effects spanned generations. The second generation benefitted as much as the first. The takeaway: even modest health program can have “big, multi-generation impacts.”
Students participate in school activities at the Sahabatpur Daspara Ananda school in Sahabatpur village, Bangladesh. Photo Credit: Dominic Chavez, World Bank
Principal investigators
Tania Barham (CU Vlogƽ); Brachel Champion (U.S. Air Force Academy); Gisella Kagy (University of Wisconsin–Madison); Jena Hamadani (icddr,b)
Funding
CU Population Center; Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS); International Initiative for Impact Evaluation; National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Collaboration + support
icddr,b, an international health research institute based in Dhaka, Bangladesh; University of Wisconsin–Madison; U.S. Air Force Academy
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Early childhood health interventions have ‘big, multi-generation impacts,’ research finds