
You are here

Topics:
Expertise
Health economics, Applied econometrics, Epidemiological and economic simulation modeling, Impact evaluation, AIDS.
Bio
Mead Over is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development researching economics of efficient, effective, and cost-effective health interventions in developing countries. Much of his work since 1987, first at the World Bank and now at the CGD, is on the economics of the AIDS epidemic. After work on the economic impact of the AIDS epidemic and on cost-effective interventions, he co-authored the Bank’s first comprehensive treatment of the economics of AIDS in the book, Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities for a Global Epidemic (1997,1999). His most recent book is Achieving an AIDS Transition: Preventing Infections to Sustain Treatment (2011)in which he offers options, for donors, recipients, activists and other participants in the fight against HIV, to reverse the trend in the epidemic through better prevention. His previous publications include The Economics of Effective AIDS Treatment: Evaluating Policy Options for Thailand (2006). Other papers examine the economics of preventing and of treating malaria. In addition to ongoing work on the determinants of adherence to AIDS treatment in poor countries, he is working on optimal pricing of health care services at the periphery, on the measurement and explanation of the efficiency of health service delivery in poor countries and on optimal interventions to control a global influenza pandemic.
In addition to his numerous research projects at the Center, Over currently serves as a member of PEPFAR’s Scientific Advisory Board and as a member of the Steering Committee of the HIV/AIDS modeling consortium funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
After leaving college, Over served in the US Peace Corps’ first program in Burkina Faso, where he worked with villagers in the construction of 25 water wells. While earning his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he spent one year as a Foreign Scholar in the Economics Department of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). After leaving Madison, he taught health economics, development economics, applied microeconomics and econometrics as an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and the Center for Development at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts from 1975 through 1981 and as an Associate Professor of Economics at Boston University from 1981 through 1985, where he also held the position of Associate Professor of Public Health.
Recruited to the World Bank as a Health Economist in 1986, Mead Over advanced to the position of Lead Health Economist in the Development Research Group, before leaving the World Bank to join the Center for Global Development in 2006. Each spring since 2005, he has taught a module on “Modeling the Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions against Infectious Diseases” as part of the master’s degree program in health economics for developing countries at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International (CERDI) at the University of the Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France.
- HIV prevention costs and program scale: data from the PANCEA project in five low and middle-income countries BMC Health Services Research, 2007, 7 (1), 108.
- Over, Mead et al., "The economics of effective AIDS treatment in Thailand," AIDS 21 Suppl 4 (July): S105-S116 (2007). Based on the previously pulished book: The Economics of Effective AIDS Treatment Evaluating Policy Options for Thailand World Bank, Washington, DC (2006).
- Antiretroviral therapy and HIV prevention in India: modeling costs and consequences of policy options, Over, M. et al., Sex Transm.Dis. 33 (10 Suppl): S145-S152 (2006).
- Sexually Transmitted Infections by Sevgi Aral and Mead Over, with Lisa Manhart and King Holmes. (2006) Chapter 17 in D. Jamison et al (eds.) Disease Control Priorities.
- Will a global subsidy of artemisinin-based combination treatment (ACT) for malaria delay the emergence of resistance and save lives? Health Affairs, 25, no. 2 (2006): 325-336. (version with demand curves)
- Impregnated Nets or DDT Residual Spraying? Field Effectiveness of Malaria Prevention Techniques in the Solomon Islands, 1993-99, with Patricia Graves, Bernard Bakote’e, Raman Velayudhan, Peter Waleaulo, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, August, 2004, Vol. 71, No. 2 Supplement.
- HIV/AIDS Treatment and Prevention in India Modeling the Costs and Consequences (2004) with Peter Heywood, Julian Gold, Indrani Gupta, Subhash Hira, Elliot Marseille. Human Development Network Health, Nutrition, and Population Series. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
- Impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the health sectors of developing countries. (2004). In The macroeconomics of HIV/AIDS. Edited by Markus Haacker. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund.
- "Evaluating the Impact of Organizational Reforms in Hospitals," with Naoko Watanabe, Chapter 3 in A. Preker and A.Harding (eds.) Innovations in health service delivery: The corporatization of public hospitals. World Bank, March 2003
- Sources of Financial Assistance for Households Suffering and Adult Death in Kagera, Tanzania with M.Lundberg and P.Mujinjia. The South African Journal of Economics, 2000, 68 (5) and Working Paper No. 2508, Development Research Group, Infrastructure and Environment, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
- The Public Interest in a Private Disease: The Government’s role in STD Control, chapter 1 of K.K. Holmes, et al (eds.), Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 3d ed., New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities in a Global Epidemic. with Martha Ainsworth, World Bank, 1997, 1999. Summary in English, French, Spanish.
- Confronting AIDS: Evidence from the developing World, (1998) with Martha Ainsworth and Lieve Fransen (eds.) European Union.
- “The effects of societal variables on urban rates of HIV infection in developing countries: An exploratory analysis”, Part I Chapter 2 in Confronting AIDS: Evidence from the developing World, (1998) with Martha Ainsworth and Lieve Fransen (eds.) European Union.
- HIV Infection and Sexually Transmitted Diseases with Peter Piot. (1993) In D.T Jamison and others, eds. Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press, pp-455-527.
More From Mead Over
Counting the number of patients on treatment is no longer enough. For years even the friendliest critics of the global struggle against AIDS have pointed out that this metric unfairly neglects the people who are not put on treatment and then die, largely because their deaths are uncounted except in so far as they increase the treatment “coverage rate.” This diverts attention from the challenge of assuring that patients are retained on treatment and remain alive and healthy, rather than failing treatment and dying, sometimes after only a few months.
This is a joint post with Mead Over.
The new World Bank Group Strategy posted this week for discussion by the Development Committee, the ministerial-level forum that oversees the World Bank and the IMF, provides a solid analytical foundation for what has so far been a messy and disjointed re-organization effort. The release of the paper coincided with a speech by bank president Jim Kim that covered much of the same ground, but the strategy paper digs deeper. For those of us who believe that the World Bank has a crucial role to play in addressing the problems of the 21st Century, there is much to applaud.
This report offers a strategy for the Global Fund to get more health for the money by focusing more on results, maximizing cost-effectiveness, and systematically measuring performance throughout its operations.
This is a joint post with Alan Gelb.
In response to our August 5 blog criticizing the World Bank’s current reorganization plans, a few readers wrote to ask us if we could come up with a better idea. This is a daunting challenge. We’ve heard that the Bank has spent millions over more than a year to generate more than 40 ideas about how to tweak the Bank’s organization and has intensively discussed three overarching ideas, for none of which we have actually seen a background paper – or even a PowerPoint. So with brains unfettered by facts, uncluttered by concept papers, bereft of briefings and emboldened by ignorance, here goes…
This is a joint post with Mead Over.
The World Bank is reorganizing. Bloomberg reports that president Jim Yong Kim has written staff about a shake-up at the bank’s highest levels in preparation for implementing an as-yet-to-be-announced new institutional strategy. Such can be unsettling for bank employees, some of whom will find their jobs on the line and others who may get new bosses. Is there any reason for the rest of the world to care?
The Institute of Medicine, the prestigious health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, has weighed in with a massive report on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the multibillion dollar US effort to confront the epidemic in the developing world. The evaluation validates PEPFAR’s enormous reach during its first 10 years and identifies concrete actions that Congress and PEPFAR should take for the program to become more sustainable moving forward.
Friday, February 8, 2013 12:30pm–2:00pm **Please bring your lunch--beverages provided**
FeaturingJoseph Kutzin Director, Health Financing Policy World Health Organization
With DiscussantAdam Wagstaff Research Manager, Human Development & Public Services team Development Research Group, World Bank
Hosted byMead Over Senior Fellow Center for Global Development
The idea of achieving universal health coverage was introduced in high income countries after World War II and has since influenced rationale for health coverage policy worldwide. However, many health financing reforms introduced in developing countries - often involving ideas borrowed from their developed neighbors - have exacerbated social inequalities and fragmentation in the name of "starting insurance." Fortunately, recent reforms in several low and middle income countries provide an alternative approach, combining streamlining revenue sources and using output- and needs-oriented provider payment. The WHO noted in the World Health Report 2000 that "the path to universal coverage must be home grown," but should still be guided by lessons from experience. Joseph Kutzin will illustrate examples, best practices and pitfalls.
Pages
This paper proposes a cash-on-delivery approach to reward AIDS programs in accordance with the number of verifiable HIV infections they avert.
It’s one thing to measure the quality of AIDS care; it’s another to understand how to improve it. Our last blog showed how the metaphor of the “treatment cascade” can be a useful way to conceptualize and measure the quality of AIDS care and that PEPFAR supported care has room for improvement on this measure (see more on the treatment cascade here). In order to achieve the health benefits that would result from reducing patient attrition over the course of the treatment cascade, PEPFAR and its partners need to learn why some facilities do better than others and what factors contributors to treatment success.
At our recent event, “How Can Finance Ministries Support a Sustainable HIV Response?” representatives from PEPFAR and the US Department of Treasury came together to discuss an innovative partnership between them and with finance ministries around the world. The partnership aims to improve the coordination and productivity of resources devoted to combatting HIV/AIDS in low- and middle-income countries, and to strengthen the long-term feasibility of these efforts.
Using panel data from Mozambique collected in 2007 and 2008, the authors explore the impact of the food crisis on the welfare of households living with HIV/AIDS. While HIV households have not suffered more from the crisis than others, infected people who experienced a negative income shock also expereinced a reduction or a slower progression in outcomes when treating their illness.
For many developing countries, the U.S. credit crisis will mean slower growth and rising inequality.
Pages
There is no content currently that matches this filter.
Commentary Menu