Can transparency and accountability programs improve health? Experimental evidence from Indonesia and Tanzania q

We assess the impact of a transparency and accountability program designed to improve maternal and newborn health (MNH) outcomes in Indonesia and Tanzania. Co-designed with local partner organiza-tions to be community-led and non-prescriptive, the program sought to encourage community participa-tion to address local barriers in access to high quality care for pregnant women and infants. We evaluate the impact of this program through randomized controlled trials (RCTs), involving 100 treatment and 100 control communities in each country. We find that on average, this program did not have a statistically significant impact on the use or content of maternal and newborn health services, nor on perceptions of civic efficacy or civic participation among recent mothers in the communities where it was offered. These findings hold in both countries and in a set of prespecified subgroups. To identify reasons for the lack of impacts, we use a mixed-method approach combining interviews, observations, surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic studies that together provide an in-depth assessment of the complex causal paths link -ing participation in the program to improvements in MNH outcomes. Although participation in program meetings was substantial and sustained in most communities, and most attempted at least some of what they had planned, only a minority achieved tangible improvements, and fewer still saw more than one such success. In our assessment, the main explanation for the lack of impact is that few communities were able to traverse the complex causal paths from planning actions to accomplishing tangible improve-ments in their access to quality health care. ? 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study evaluates the impact of a transparency and accountability program aimed at improving maternal and newborn health outcomes in Indonesia and Tanzania. The program did not have a significant impact on service use and content, as well as mothers' perceptions of community participation and civic efficacy. Few communities were able to achieve tangible improvements in access to quality healthcare, indicating a lack of impact.