PLOS Medicine: The U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative and under-5 child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: A difference-in-differences analysis
Aleksandra Jakubowski, PhD candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues examine the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) using a difference-in-differences analysis “to determine whether the trends in health outcomes in PMI-recipient countries differed significantly from the trends in these outcomes in PMI non-recipient countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the past two decades. … The study provides evidence that introduction of PMI was associated with significant reductions in child mortality in SSA, primarily through increased access to malaria prevention technologies” (6/13).

PLOS Medicine: Malaria control adds to the evidence for health aid effectiveness
Eran Bendavid, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University, discusses the effectiveness of foreign aid for malaria control, examining the study by Jakubowski and colleagues. Bendavid writes, “U.S. foreign aid for health has arguably been the single most important driver of the last 20 years’ health improvements in developing countries. … The U.S.-financed retreat of malaria now adds to the pantheon of global health achievements. In this issue of PLOS Medicine, Aleksandra Jakubowski and colleagues provide an independent evaluation of the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative that adds meaningful evidence to the literature on health aid effectiveness” (6/13).