Evaluating the impact of Cuban physician cooperation: Evidence from Brazil's Mais Medicos Program

Sammanfattning: Cuba is a world leader in medical diplomacy, supplying health care workers to underserved and developing countries on a global scale. One of Cuba's largest cooperations, its participation in Brazil's Mais Medicos Program (More Doctors Program, MMP), ended in the abrupt withdrawal of cooperative Cuban physicians in 2018 following political disputes. This thesis aims to quantify heterogeneity in treatment effects between domestic physicians and Cuban cooperative physicians participating in MMP. Using a differences-in-differences method with municipal panel data between 2008 and 2018, I examine the effect of receiving Cuban cooperative physicians as compared to Brazilian physicians on infant health outcomes, as measured by infant mortality, low birth weight, and preterm rate. I find that overall MMP implementation led to reductions in preterm rate in participating municipalities by an average of 8.5 percent. Considering heterogeneity across physician nationality, I find that reductions in preterm rate were over 9 percentage points lower among municipalities receiving Cuban cooperative physicians as compared to municipalities receiving Brazilian physicians. I find no treatment effect across either physician nationality on infant mortality or low birth weight rate.