#NEUDC2025 👥🏥 Session on Public and Private Healthcare Nathan Franz from University of Texas at Austin will present: “Cheaper and better? Explaining a newborn mortality advantage at public versus private hospitals in India” #TuftsUniversity @NathanMFranz

The figure is from a 2007 World Bank report put together by Geeta Sethi, @AiyarYamini, Luis Constantino, @markjohnellery, @LantPritchett, Jeffrey Hammer, and Salimah Samji (at @HarvardBSC). Super useful work! https://t.co/onmR9skWEW

In this case, the feedback loop of accountability is weak—so if public services are of low quality, citizens can complain to local politicians who can't improve them or to more distant politicians who won't improve them.

The arrows show who is accountable to whom in Indian governance. What's important here: Politicians with a smaller scope are more accountable to the beneficiaries of public services, but providers of public services are less accountable to politicians with a smaller scope.

This figure is a bit ugly, but take a look! It shows off an important reason why the Indian government works when it does and why not when it doesn't.

Heads up! I'm going to start tweeting interesting facts and problems from my research; mostly about maternal and child health in India, but there will probably be some detours along the way.

Since it wasn't immediately clear on my first reading: This is 13% reduction in _all cause_ childhood mortality. That's staggering. Like, aiming at the "best things to ever happen" leaderboard levels of staggering.

Semafor Flagship newsletter >>>>> NYT, Wapo newsletter

Wow, this is an absolute game changer. There's now a mRNA vaccine in the works for malaria. Huge, huge news for Africa. 💚 https://t.co/IArPl39IC3

A photo of who we hope is the final Ebola survivor returning home

Now seems highly likely that there has been undetected community transmission ongoing in parts of the upper West Coast for weeks, at least. How did we end up with major surveillance failure on par with Italy and Iran? Let's talk about how that happens.

We have enough problems for everyone to be working on saving the world.

What we need today are universal values based not on faith but on scientific findings, common experience and common sense.

A great deal of confusion in science education would be solved if theories were presented in light of the problems they were meant to solve.

As the US exits the landmark INF missile treaty, one Russian paper today says the treaty’s collapse “increases the risk of a nuclear conflict & moves the world closer to war with all its catastrophic consequences.” #ReadingRussia

Thinking about opening a moving company but with cargo pants instead of trucks.

"Whoops, forgot to pack that sock."

"Better hold onto my phone charger so I don't forget where I put it." "I don't really have anywhere else for those batteries to go." "If I throw that antacid away, I'll just need to get more later."

Moving is weird because it makes you realize just how much uncategorizable stuff you have scattered throughout your apartment. And in my case about half of it ends up in my pockets.

In https://t.co/PdABtZsEjY, I argued that non-fiction books are surprisingly ineffective for typical readers. One common (great!) criticism I heard was: Isn’t reader interest the biggest factor? So what if vaguely-interested people don’t absorb much from pop non-fiction? (Thread)