Omar Galarraga
Biography
Omar Galárraga is the Director of the Center for Global Public Health (CGPH) at Brown University School of Public Health, where he is a tenured Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice. At Brown, he also serves in the steering committee for the Population Studies & Training Center (PSTC), on the advisory committee for the Center for Latin American Studies (CLACS), and the advisory board for the Data Science Institute (DSI); and is a Faculty Fellow at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs. Dr. Galárraga serves as Associate Editor for Health Economics; as standing member of the NIH Science of Implementation in Health & Healthcare (SIHH) study section; and was an appointed member of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council (OARAC) during 2021-24. He conducts research in Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, and the US in collaboration with community and academic partners.
Research
Dr. Galárraga's research uses field experiments such as randomized controlled trials to test the effects of conditional economic incentives for health behavior change, including incentives to exercise as well as incentives to improve HIV prevention and treatment outcomes. A related area of research concerns computer-based survey experiments (including discrete choice experiments) to inform program design and analyze participants' preferences. Another area of his research uses quasi-experimental and rigorous non-experimental approaches (including instrumental variables, differences-in-differences, regression discontinuity) to analyze the impact of health systems reform and insurance expansion. His research on health systems reform has led to publications evaluating the impact of social health insurance programs (such as Seguro Popular in Mexico, the National Hospital Insurance Fund in Kenya, and Medicaid in the US) on various economic and health outcomes. Other papers have concerned modelling evaluations as well as economic efficiency research (such as microsimulation, cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit and cost-utility studies).
Publications
Thapa BB, Rahman M, Were L, Wamai R, Galárraga O. Do targeted intergovernmental fiscal transfers improve health outcomes? Evidence from Kenyan decentralization using the difference-in-differences technique. Health Res Policy Syst. 2024 Dec 20;22(1):172. doi: 10.1186/s12961-024-01272-x. PMID: 39707406; PMCID: PMC11660824.
Galárraga O, Wilson-Barthes M, Chivardi C, Gras-Allain N, Alarid-Escudero F, Gandhi M, Mayer KH, Operario D. Incentivizing adherence to pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention: a randomized pilot trial among male sex workers in Mexico. Eur J Health Econ. 2024 Jul 13:10.1007/s10198-024-01705-y. doi: 10.1007/s10198-024-01705-y. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39002005; PMCID: PMC11725604.
Galárraga O, Quijano-Ruiz A, Faytong-Haro M. The Effects of Mobile Primary Health Teams: Evidence from the "Médico del Barrio" Strategy in Ecuador. World Dev. 2024 Sep;181:106659. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106659. Epub 2024 May 20. PMID: 38911668; PMCID: PMC11192489.
Sawe SJ, Mugo R, Wilson-Barthes M, Osetinsky B, Chrysanthopoulou SA, Yego F, Mwangi A, Galárraga O. Gaussian process emulation to improve efficiency of computationally intensive multidisease models: a practical tutorial with adaptable R code. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2024 Jan 27;24(1):26. doi: 10.1186/s12874-024-02149-x. PMID: 38281017; PMCID: PMC10821551.
Osetinsky B, Hontelez JAC, Lurie MN, McGarvey ST, Bloomfield GS, Pastakia SD, Wamai R, Bärnighausen T, de Vlas SJ, Galárraga O. Epidemiological And Health Systems Implications Of Evolving HIV And Hypertension In South Africa And Kenya. Health Aff (Millwood). 2019 Jul;38(7):1173-1181. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05287. PMID: 31260360; PMCID: PMC7983613.
Teaching
PHP 1480 -- Introduction to Public Health Economics
PHP 2480 -- Selected Topics in Health Economics