Health Microinsurance: Implementing Universal Health Coverage in the Informal Sector

This book is the first and only study on implementing Universal Health Coverage in poor, rural and informal settings, with end-to-end guidance for rolling out a demand-driven and needs-based health insurance model. The chapters are comprehensive, covering topics such as data collection and analysis for contextual risk assessment, the design of suitable benefits packages, how to price microinsurance, insurance education for illiterate or innumerate populations, the setting up of governance bodies and training staff for key roles, and information management.

The book contains insights gained from years of fieldwork in several countries and is valuable reading for undergraduate and graduate students and practitioners of health microinsurance. As a companion to the author's first book, Financing Micro Health Insurance: Theory, Methods and Evidence, this book provides the only current source of information on implementing health microinsurance. The practical guidelines to setting up and operating a microinsurance scheme are accompanied by impact evaluation, chapter exercises and Issue Briefs that present examples of using tools that are necessary for successful implementation.

Readership: Undergraduate and graduate students of health economics and finance, microinsurance businesses and practitioners.

Dr David M Dror is an acclaimed international expert in microinsurance with over 35 years' experience in social protection and health financing. He served as Senior Social Security Specialist for the International Labour Organization (UN–ILO) from 1982 to 2003, advising on social and health insurance systems worldwide. Dr Dror has been Hon. Professor of Health Insurance at Erasmus University Rotterdam (2004–2014). He has been working in India since 2005 and has professional experience in numerous countries across Asia and Africa, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, and Vietnam.

In 2007, he established the Micro Insurance Academy (MIA) in New Delhi. Under his direction, MIA has conducted research into key pain-points of catalyzing demand for microinsurance, providing technical assistance toward implementation of microinsurance projects in the informal economy in India (multiple states), Nepal, Tanzania and Vietnam, covering several risk categories — health, crop, livestock and climate change. MIA also provides insurance education, as well as consultancy services in microinsurance.

Dr Dror was named "Personality of the Year" in 2009 by the Asia Insurance Industry for "groundbreaking research and study which has helped boost understanding of how the world's poorest communities can benefit from microinsurance". In 2011 and in 2014, he received the Global Citizen Lifetime Achievement "Karmaveer Puraskaar" Award for Social Justice and Citizen Action, from the Indian Confederation of NGOs. Dr Dror holds a PhD (Summa cum Laude) from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France, and DBA (Magna cum Laude) in International Health Services. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed publications. His paper "Climate Cost of Cultivation: A method to quantify the added cost to farmers of climate-change, illustrated in rural India" (co-authored with Jangle N and Mehra M in 2016) was awarded Best Paper by the 20th Asian Actuarial Conference (November 2016, Gurgaon, India).