Community Masking and COVID-19: Pandemic Responses in Bangladesh and Beyond | Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, professor of Economics at Yale University with concurrent appointments in the School of Management and in the Department of Economics, discusses his research on COVID-19 response in Bangladesh and beyond, including masking, vaccine equity, and appropriate pandemic response policies in low and middle income countries. He provides an overview of the coauthored MaskNorm study, a randomized-trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh during COVID-19 that demonstrates a scalable and effective method to promote mask adoption and reduce symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections. He also discusses efficient last-mile vaccine delivery in low-income countries and related research on the lower epidemiological and welfare value of social distancing in lower-income countries. Mobarak is the founder and faculty director of the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE). He holds other appointments at Innovations for Poverty Action, the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, the International Growth Centre (IGC) at LSE. This event is part of the Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) 2021-22 Colloquium series "Aligning Incentives for Better Health and More Resilient Health Systems in Asia.”