As part of the research project on the SHPI, the long-term follow-up working group examines the development of out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures for inpatient care services (IPD) under SHPI Phase I since 2017. We are happy to see that Vendula Stepanikova, a member of the FAU team based in Germany, had the opportunity to travel to Peshawar between the 4th and the 14th of September and to make significant progress on the research design of the working group.
The primary goal of the trip was the preparation of the data collection, which will take into account 6,000 households in eight districts that have previously been interviewed in 2015 and 2017, i.e. before and one year after the program launch. The group will be collecting data via a phone survey. Despite the new challenges created, for instance, by the extreme floodings in Pakistan that impacted KP province and severely hit some of the districts, the team is confident that conducting a phone survey will allow them to undertake a successful data collection, following the positive experience of the first phone survey of the population panel group.
During the stay in Pakistan, Ms. Stepanikova successfully cooperated with the local team and conducted extensive training with 11 enumerators. Moreover, she was able finalize the survey tool after conducting numerous tests, testing different language versions of the tool, and preparing the tool in the ODK Collect app so that the data can be collected on tablets.
The group is now ready and excited to start collecting data and is looking forward to finding out how OOP expenditures and financial protection of poor households developed following the introduction of the inpatient care scheme.
