Community based health insurance and the well-being of children and households in Plan communities in Togo

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) remains an important global challenge. In this endeavour, protecting the poor against health risks is crucial and micro or community-based health-insurance (CBHI) schemes are being advanced as a means of reducing and stabilizing the costs of treatment, increasing access to healthcare and reducing the use of costly risk-coping strategies. In the past two decades, hundreds of small schemes have been implemented around the world but, to date, reliable empirical evidence of the effects of health insurance is still limited. The objectives of this project are to understand (i) who participates in CBHI, (ii) its impact on (improved) access to healthcare and the health status of mothers and children, and (iii) its contribution to poverty reduction and well-being.