Seminar Vol. 212
Title: Social Stigma as a Barrier to HIV Testing: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Mozambique
Speaker: Hang Yu, University of Michigan
Time: April 13th, 2020 09:30-11:00
About the speaker:
Dr. Hang Yu's primary field is development economics. His current research is on health issues in Africa. He is conducting randomized controlled trials and surveys in Mozambique to study ways to improve HIV/AIDS treatment adherence and strengthen orphaned and vulnerable children. His other topics of interest include political economics and behavioral economics. Some of his past and current research involves creating and analyzing novel datasets.
If you want to know more about him, please visit his personal website
Abstract:
Public health experts have seen the stigma as a leading barrier affecting the delivery of HIV-related health care. By using a field experiment in Mozambique, this study identifies the role of stigma concerns in hindering HIV testing and quantifies the stigma barrier. To obtain local measures of the HIV stigma environment in the study sites, we conducted a baseline survey one year before the experiment. Experiment participants with excessive concerns, defined as overestimating the stigma in their communities, were randomly assigned an intervention to relieve stigma concerns. The intervention, which drew upon findings from the baseline survey, was designed to reveal the correct degree of stigma that a participant had overestimated. Analyses show that this intervention raised the HIV test uptake rate by 7.7 percentage points (or by 37 percent) from 20.7 percent under the control condition. To quantify the intervention effect, I introduced testing coupons of different values to estimate the demand curve for an HIV test. The concern-relieving intervention raised an individual’s willingness-to-pay for an HIV test by $1.30, or more than half of the daily cost-of-living in the study population.
Interested in this webinar? Please contact Feiyan at feiyantang@jnu.edu.cn, or scan the QR code bellow to register.
