Bangladesh: Evaluation of Impacts of the Rural Service Delivery Partnership (RSDP)

Author(s):

Year: 2003

Abstract:

Data from the 2001 Rural Service Deilvery Partnership (RSDP) Evaluation Survey indicate that the project has had positive effects on the health and health-care seeking behaviors of the targeted populations. Much of this impact analysis focuses on qualtifying key changes in the use of essential services since the 1998 Baseline Survey and identfying the pathways through which those changes have occured. The following key findings were found: The RSDP program is responsible for substantial increases in antenatal care use. Similations indicate that the project is responsible for an 8.6 percentage point increase in antenatal care, an 8.6 percentage point increase in the number of pregnant women with two or more tetanus toxoid injections, and a 3.3 precentage point increase in the use of modern contraception from 1998 to 2001. For child health outcomes, the impact of the project was smaller. Price generally had a small effect on the use of services at RSDP clinics and depotholders; distance, however, appears to have a larger effect and is likely a significant determinant of overall use of antenatal care and of RSDP providers for antenatal care and modern contraception. Multilevel analyses indicate that RSDP provider characteristics generally do not have significant impacts on the likelihood of their use, with the exceptions of distance, satellite clinic worker experience, and service availability.