Kevin Croke
Biographic Data
| ID | 1095165 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin Croke |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin |
| FAMILY NAME | Croke |
| SIGNATURE | CROKE K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4750-9280 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 110 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The relationship between prolonged travel and mortality among women with complicated deliveries in rural Kenya
Background: In many low- and middle-income settings, deliveries often take place in primary health facilities that are not equipped to address life-threatening complications. Emergency referral systems seek to rapidly transport women and newborns facing complications but inevitably introduce delays. Estimating the mortality impact of these delays is challenging due to potential selection bias. As an alternative approach, we examine the relationsh…
Health insurance in Nigeria
The recent Lancet Commission on Nigeria’s health system highlighted high out of pocket expenditures on health and underfunding of the public health sector as major obstacles to Nigeria’s achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Nigeria has sought to address these gaps by extending health insurance coverage. This paper measures health insurance coverage and access to care in Nigeria in 2023, using the first round of the People’s Voice Sur…
“If they were telling us to go, we will go”
INTRODUCTION: Few studies have explored the extent to which mother-newborn dyads have access to high-quality postnatal care (PNC) in low-income and middle-income countries. This study aims to measure effective (quality-adjusted) PNC coverage for newborns both before discharge and after discharge from the delivery facility, and for mothers before discharge, and to examine factors influencing access to high-quality PNC. METHODS: We conducted an exp…
Salary delays among public sector primary care workers
BACKGROUND: Primary healthcare is crucial for universal health coverage in low- and middle-income countries. While research on improving workforce performance has focused on training and incentives, the impact of basic payment system functions remains underexplored. This study investigates salary delays among public-sector primary care workers across 16 low- and middle-income countries and the association of delays with worker outcomes. METHODS: …
Power, interests, and maternal health care
The maternal and newborn health (MNH) service delivery redesign (SDR) in Kakamega County, Kenya, represents the country's first system-level reorganization of MNH services. The reform aimed to improve care quality and reduce mortality by centralizing delivery services at designated hubs. Using a political economy lens, we examined how ideology, political dynamics, and institutional structures shaped the agenda-setting, adoption, implementation, a…
Sustaining Exposure to Fact-Checks
Exposure to misinformation can affect citizens' beliefs, political preferences, and compliance with government policies. However, little is known about how to durably reduce susceptibility to misinformation, particularly in the Global South. We evaluate an intervention in South Africa that encouraged individuals to consume biweekly fact-checks-as text messages or podcasts-via WhatsApp for six months. Sustained exposure to these fact-checks induce…
Health reform in Nigeria
Over the past decade, Nigeria has seen major attempts to strengthen primary health care, through the Saving One Million Lives (SOML) initiative, and to move towards universal health care, through the National Health Act. Both initiatives were successfully adopted, but faced political and institutional challenges in implementation and sustainability. We analyse these programmes from a political economy perspective, examining barriers to and facili…
Care seeking during pregnancy
A health systems reform known as Service Delivery Redesign (SDR) for maternal and newborn health seeks to make high-quality delivery care universal in Kakamega County, in western Kenya, by strengthening hospital-level care and making hospital deliveries the default option for pregnant women. Using a large prospective survey of new mothers in Kakamega County, we examine several key assumptions that underpin the SDR policy’s theory of change. We an…
Up before Dawn
Small-scale cross-border trade provides opportunities for economic gains in many developing countries. Yet cross-border traders—many of whom are women—face harassment and corruption, which can undermine these potential gains. We present evidence from a randomized controlled trial that provided access to information on procedures, tariffs, and rights to small-scale traders to facilitate border crossings, lower corruption, and reduce gender-based v…
How are health workers paid and does it matter? Conceptualising the potential implications of digitising health worker payments
Access to health services, food, and water during an active conflict
Civil conflict began in Ethiopia in November 2020 and has reportedly caused major disruptions in access to health services, food, and related critical services, in addition to the direct impacts of the conflict on health and well-being. However, the population-level impacts of the conflict have not yet been systematically quantified. We analyze high frequency phone surveys conducted by the World Bank, which included measures of access to basic se…
Service delivery reform for maternal and newborn health in Kakamega County, Kenya
This protocol describes a hybrid effectiveness/implementation evaluation study with an adaptive design. The impact evaluation ("effectiveness") study focuses on maternal and newborn health outcomes, and will be accompanied by an implementation evaluation focused on program reach, adoption, and fidelity
Effects of a community-driven water, sanitation and hygiene intervention on water and sanitation infrastructure, access, behaviour, and governance
INTRODUCTION: (VEA), with support from UNICEF, financed by UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. METHODS: A cluster-level randomised controlled trial of VEA was implemented throughout 2019 across 332 rural villages, grouped into 50 treatment and 71 control clusters. Primary outcomes included time spent collecting water; quantity of water collected; prevalence of improved primary source of drinking water; and prevalence of improved pr…
The origins of Ethiopia's primary health care expansion
Ethiopia’s expansion of primary health care over the past 15 years has been hailed as a model in sub-Saharan Africa. A leader closely associated with the programme, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, is now Director-General of the World Health Organization, and the global movement for expansion of primary health care often cites Ethiopia as a model. Starting in 2004, over 30 000 Health Extension Workers were trained and deployed in Ethiopia and over 2500…
The Impact of Health Programs on Political Opinion
For elections to produce accountable government, citizens must reward politicians who deliver benefits. Yet there is relatively limited causal evidence of changes in public opinion in direct response to specific government programs. This question is examined in Tanzania, which has implemented large health programs targeting diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. Tanzania's 2010–11 antimalaria campaign took place concurrently with a national house…
The impact of a health facility construction campaign on health service utilisation and outcomes
BACKGROUND: Access to health facilities in many low-income and middle-income countries remains low, with a strong association between individuals' distance to facilities and health outcomes. Yet plausibly causal estimates of the effects of facility construction programmes are rare. Starting in 2004, more than 2800 government health facilities were built in Ethiopia. This study estimates the impact of this programme on maternal health service util…
Up before Dawn
Small-scale cross-border trade provides opportunities for economic gains in many developing countries. Yet cross-border traders -- many of whom are women -- face harassment and corruption, which can undermine these potential gains. This paper presents evidence from a randomized controlled trial of a training intervention that provided access to information on procedures, tariffs, and rights to small-scale traders to facilitate border crossings, l…
Health service delivery and political trust in Nigeria
Do improvements in health service delivery affect trust in political leaders in Africa? Citizens expect their government to provide social services. Intuitively, improvements in service delivery should lead to higher levels of trust in and support for political leaders. However, in contexts where inadequate services are the norm, and where political support is linked to ethnic or religious affiliation, there may be weak linkages between improveme…
The political economy of health financing reform in Malaysia
There is growing evidence that political economy factors are central to whether or not proposed health financing reforms are adopted, but there is little consensus about which political and institutional factors determine the fate of reform proposals. One set of scholars see the relative strength of interest groups in favour of and opposed to reform as the determining factor. An alternative literature identifies aspects of a country’s political i…
Tools of single party hegemony in Tanzania
Political systems dominated by a single party are common in the developing world, including in countries that hold regular elections. Yet we lack knowledge about the strategies by which these regimes maintain political dominance. This article presents evidence from Tanzania, a paradigmatic dominant party regime, to demonstrate how party institutions are used instrumentally to ensure the regime's sustained control. First, I show that the ruling pa…
Deliberate Disengagement
A large literature examining advanced and consolidating democracies suggests that education increases political participation. However, in electoral authoritarian regimes, educated voters may instead deliberately disengage. If education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and support for democracy, educated citizens may believe that participation is futile or legitimizes autocrats. We test this argument in Zimbabwe—a paradigmatic …
Deliberate Disengagement
A large literature examining advanced and consolidating democracies suggests that education increases political participation. However, in electoral authoritarian regimes, educated voters may instead deliberately disengage. If education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and support for democracy, educated citizens may believe that participation is futile or legitimizes autocrats. We test this argument in Zimbabwe-a paradigmatic …
Collecting high frequency panel data in Africa using mobile phone interviews
As mobile phone ownership rates have risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. In both cases, high frequency panel data have been collected on a wide range of topics in a manner that is cost effective, flexible and rapid. Attrition has been problematic in both surveys,…
Collecting High Frequency Panel Data in Africa Using Mobile Phone Interviews
As mobile phone ownership rates have \n risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile \n telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on \n two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data \n collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. The experience was \n largely a success. High frequency panel data have been \n collected on a wide range of topics in a manner that is cost \n effective, flexible (questions can…
The Political Economy of Child Mortality Decline in Tanzania and Uganda, 1995–2007
Deliberate Disengagement
A large literature examining advanced and consolidating democracies suggests that education increases political participation. However, in electoral authoritarian regimes, educated voters may instead deliberately disengage. If education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and support for democracy, educated citizens may believe that participation is futile or legitimizes autocrats. We test this argument in Zimbabwe-a paradigmatic …
Tools of single party hegemony in Tanzania
Political systems dominated by a single party are common in the developing world, including in countries that hold regular elections. Yet we lack knowledge about the strategies by which these regimes maintain political dominance. This article presents evidence from Tanzania, a paradigmatic dominant party regime, to demonstrate how party institutions are used instrumentally to ensure the regime's sustained control. First, I show that the ruling pa…
Collecting high frequency panel data in Africa using mobile phone interviews
As mobile phone ownership rates have risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. In both cases, high frequency panel data have been collected on a wide range of topics in a manner that is cost effective, flexible and rapid. Attrition has been problematic in both surveys,…
The Political Economy of Child Mortality Decline in Tanzania and Uganda, 1995–2007
The Impact of Health Programs on Political Opinion
For elections to produce accountable government, citizens must reward politicians who deliver benefits. Yet there is relatively limited causal evidence of changes in public opinion in direct response to specific government programs. This question is examined in Tanzania, which has implemented large health programs targeting diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. Tanzania's 2010–11 antimalaria campaign took place concurrently with a national house…
Sustaining Exposure to Fact-Checks
Exposure to misinformation can affect citizens' beliefs, political preferences, and compliance with government policies. However, little is known about how to durably reduce susceptibility to misinformation, particularly in the Global South. We evaluate an intervention in South Africa that encouraged individuals to consume biweekly fact-checks-as text messages or podcasts-via WhatsApp for six months. Sustained exposure to these fact-checks induce…
Collecting High Frequency Panel Data in Africa Using Mobile Phone Interviews
As mobile phone ownership rates have \n risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile \n telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on \n two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data \n collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. The experience was \n largely a success. High frequency panel data have been \n collected on a wide range of topics in a manner that is cost \n effective, flexible (questions can…
The Political Economy of Child Mortality Decline in Tanzania and Uganda, 1995–2007
Collecting high frequency panel data in Africa using mobile phone interviews
As mobile phone ownership rates have risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. In both cases, high frequency panel data have been collected on a wide range of topics in a manner that is cost effective, flexible and rapid. Attrition has been problematic in both surveys,…
Deliberate Disengagement
A large literature examining advanced and consolidating democracies suggests that education increases political participation. However, in electoral authoritarian regimes, educated voters may instead deliberately disengage. If education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and support for democracy, educated citizens may believe that participation is futile or legitimizes autocrats. We test this argument in Zimbabwe—a paradigmatic …
Deliberate Disengagement
A large literature examining advanced and consolidating democracies suggests that education increases political participation. However, in electoral authoritarian regimes, educated voters may instead deliberately disengage. If education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and support for democracy, educated citizens may believe that participation is futile or legitimizes autocrats. We test this argument in Zimbabwe-a paradigmatic …
Tools of single party hegemony in Tanzania
Political systems dominated by a single party are common in the developing world, including in countries that hold regular elections. Yet we lack knowledge about the strategies by which these regimes maintain political dominance. This article presents evidence from Tanzania, a paradigmatic dominant party regime, to demonstrate how party institutions are used instrumentally to ensure the regime's sustained control. First, I show that the ruling pa…
Health service delivery and political trust in Nigeria
Do improvements in health service delivery affect trust in political leaders in Africa? Citizens expect their government to provide social services. Intuitively, improvements in service delivery should lead to higher levels of trust in and support for political leaders. However, in contexts where inadequate services are the norm, and where political support is linked to ethnic or religious affiliation, there may be weak linkages between improveme…
The political economy of health financing reform in Malaysia
There is growing evidence that political economy factors are central to whether or not proposed health financing reforms are adopted, but there is little consensus about which political and institutional factors determine the fate of reform proposals. One set of scholars see the relative strength of interest groups in favour of and opposed to reform as the determining factor. An alternative literature identifies aspects of a country’s political i…
The impact of a health facility construction campaign on health service utilisation and outcomes
BACKGROUND: Access to health facilities in many low-income and middle-income countries remains low, with a strong association between individuals' distance to facilities and health outcomes. Yet plausibly causal estimates of the effects of facility construction programmes are rare. Starting in 2004, more than 2800 government health facilities were built in Ethiopia. This study estimates the impact of this programme on maternal health service util…
Up before Dawn
Small-scale cross-border trade provides opportunities for economic gains in many developing countries. Yet cross-border traders -- many of whom are women -- face harassment and corruption, which can undermine these potential gains. This paper presents evidence from a randomized controlled trial of a training intervention that provided access to information on procedures, tariffs, and rights to small-scale traders to facilitate border crossings, l…
Effects of a community-driven water, sanitation and hygiene intervention on water and sanitation infrastructure, access, behaviour, and governance
INTRODUCTION: (VEA), with support from UNICEF, financed by UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. METHODS: A cluster-level randomised controlled trial of VEA was implemented throughout 2019 across 332 rural villages, grouped into 50 treatment and 71 control clusters. Primary outcomes included time spent collecting water; quantity of water collected; prevalence of improved primary source of drinking water; and prevalence of improved pr…
The origins of Ethiopia's primary health care expansion
Ethiopia’s expansion of primary health care over the past 15 years has been hailed as a model in sub-Saharan Africa. A leader closely associated with the programme, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, is now Director-General of the World Health Organization, and the global movement for expansion of primary health care often cites Ethiopia as a model. Starting in 2004, over 30 000 Health Extension Workers were trained and deployed in Ethiopia and over 2500…
The Impact of Health Programs on Political Opinion
For elections to produce accountable government, citizens must reward politicians who deliver benefits. Yet there is relatively limited causal evidence of changes in public opinion in direct response to specific government programs. This question is examined in Tanzania, which has implemented large health programs targeting diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. Tanzania's 2010–11 antimalaria campaign took place concurrently with a national house…
How are health workers paid and does it matter? Conceptualising the potential implications of digitising health worker payments
Access to health services, food, and water during an active conflict
Civil conflict began in Ethiopia in November 2020 and has reportedly caused major disruptions in access to health services, food, and related critical services, in addition to the direct impacts of the conflict on health and well-being. However, the population-level impacts of the conflict have not yet been systematically quantified. We analyze high frequency phone surveys conducted by the World Bank, which included measures of access to basic se…
Service delivery reform for maternal and newborn health in Kakamega County, Kenya
This protocol describes a hybrid effectiveness/implementation evaluation study with an adaptive design. The impact evaluation ("effectiveness") study focuses on maternal and newborn health outcomes, and will be accompanied by an implementation evaluation focused on program reach, adoption, and fidelity
Up before Dawn
Small-scale cross-border trade provides opportunities for economic gains in many developing countries. Yet cross-border traders—many of whom are women—face harassment and corruption, which can undermine these potential gains. We present evidence from a randomized controlled trial that provided access to information on procedures, tariffs, and rights to small-scale traders to facilitate border crossings, lower corruption, and reduce gender-based v…
Health reform in Nigeria
Over the past decade, Nigeria has seen major attempts to strengthen primary health care, through the Saving One Million Lives (SOML) initiative, and to move towards universal health care, through the National Health Act. Both initiatives were successfully adopted, but faced political and institutional challenges in implementation and sustainability. We analyse these programmes from a political economy perspective, examining barriers to and facili…
Care seeking during pregnancy
A health systems reform known as Service Delivery Redesign (SDR) for maternal and newborn health seeks to make high-quality delivery care universal in Kakamega County, in western Kenya, by strengthening hospital-level care and making hospital deliveries the default option for pregnant women. Using a large prospective survey of new mothers in Kakamega County, we examine several key assumptions that underpin the SDR policy’s theory of change. We an…
Salary delays among public sector primary care workers
BACKGROUND: Primary healthcare is crucial for universal health coverage in low- and middle-income countries. While research on improving workforce performance has focused on training and incentives, the impact of basic payment system functions remains underexplored. This study investigates salary delays among public-sector primary care workers across 16 low- and middle-income countries and the association of delays with worker outcomes. METHODS: …
Power, interests, and maternal health care
The maternal and newborn health (MNH) service delivery redesign (SDR) in Kakamega County, Kenya, represents the country's first system-level reorganization of MNH services. The reform aimed to improve care quality and reduce mortality by centralizing delivery services at designated hubs. Using a political economy lens, we examined how ideology, political dynamics, and institutional structures shaped the agenda-setting, adoption, implementation, a…
Sustaining Exposure to Fact-Checks
Exposure to misinformation can affect citizens' beliefs, political preferences, and compliance with government policies. However, little is known about how to durably reduce susceptibility to misinformation, particularly in the Global South. We evaluate an intervention in South Africa that encouraged individuals to consume biweekly fact-checks-as text messages or podcasts-via WhatsApp for six months. Sustained exposure to these fact-checks induce…
The relationship between prolonged travel and mortality among women with complicated deliveries in rural Kenya
Background: In many low- and middle-income settings, deliveries often take place in primary health facilities that are not equipped to address life-threatening complications. Emergency referral systems seek to rapidly transport women and newborns facing complications but inevitably introduce delays. Estimating the mortality impact of these delays is challenging due to potential selection bias. As an alternative approach, we examine the relationsh…
Health insurance in Nigeria
The recent Lancet Commission on Nigeria’s health system highlighted high out of pocket expenditures on health and underfunding of the public health sector as major obstacles to Nigeria’s achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Nigeria has sought to address these gaps by extending health insurance coverage. This paper measures health insurance coverage and access to care in Nigeria in 2023, using the first round of the People’s Voice Sur…
“If they were telling us to go, we will go”
INTRODUCTION: Few studies have explored the extent to which mother-newborn dyads have access to high-quality postnatal care (PNC) in low-income and middle-income countries. This study aims to measure effective (quality-adjusted) PNC coverage for newborns both before discharge and after discharge from the delivery facility, and for mothers before discharge, and to examine factors influencing access to high-quality PNC. METHODS: We conducted an exp…
Global Maternal and Child Health (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Economics (11 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Business (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Environmental health (7 works) · Child Nutrition and Water Access (6 works)