Indrani Saran

Indrani Saran is a post-doctoral associate at the Duke Global Health Institute, working with Professor Wendy O’Meara. Her research applies economic analysis methods to better understand how patients and providers use new information to update their health beliefs and make treatment decisions. Her current work examines these issues in the context of improving malaria treatment in Kenya.

In many resource-constrained areas like Kenya, volunteer community health workers (CHWs) deliver basic health information and services. Indrani conducted a discrete choice experiment with CHWs in Western Kenya to identify the relative importance of different monetary incentives (mobile phone airtime, transport reimbursement) and non-monetary benefits (trainings, community appreciation and health facility staff appreciation) for CHWs’ continued involvement in health programs. The results of this study will help inform the design of programs that rely on this crucial health workforce.