Recent Research
Senior Fellow
Health economics, Applied econometrics, Epidemiological and economic simulation modeling, Impact evaluation, AIDS.
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Education: PhD, University of Wisconsin, Madison (1978); BA, Dartmouth College (1967)
Mead Over is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development researching economics of efficient, effective, and cost-effective health interventions in developing countries. Much of his work since 1987, first at the World Bank and now at the CGD, is on the economics of the AIDS epidemic. After work on the economic impact of the AIDS epidemic and on cost-effective interventions, he co-authored the Bank’s first comprehensive treatment of the economics of AIDS in the book, Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities for a Global Epidemic (1997,1999). His most recent book is Achieving an AIDS Transition: Preventing Infections to Sustain Treatment (2011)in which he offers options, for donors, recipients, activists and other participants in the fight against HIV, to reverse the trend in the epidemic through better prevention. His previous publications include The Economics of Effective AIDS Treatment: Evaluating Policy Options for Thailand (2006). Other papers examine the economics of preventing and of treating malaria. In addition to ongoing work on the determinants of adherence to AIDS treatment in poor countries, he is working on optimal pricing of health care services at the periphery, on the measurement and explanation of the efficiency of health service delivery in poor countries and on optimal interventions to control a global influenza pandemic.
In addition to his numerous research projects at the Center, Over currently serves as a member of PEPFAR’s Scientific Advisory Board and as a member of the Steering Committee of the HIV/AIDS modeling consortium funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
After leaving college, Over served in the US Peace Corps’ first program in Burkina Faso, where he worked with villagers in the construction of 25 water wells. While earning his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he spent one year as a Foreign Scholar in the Economics Department of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). After leaving Madison, he taught health economics, development economics, applied microeconomics and econometrics as an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and the Center for Development at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts from 1975 through 1981 and as an Associate Professor of Economics at Boston University from 1981 through 1985, where he also held the position of Associate Professor of Public Health.
Recruited to the World Bank as a Health Economist in 1986, Mead Over advanced to the position of Lead Health Economist in the Development Research Group, before leaving the World Bank to join the Center for Global Development in 2006. Each spring since 2005, he has taught a module on “Modeling the Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions against Infectious Diseases” as part of the master’s degree program in health economics for developing countries at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International (CERDI) at the University of the Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France.
New
Popular
Working Papers Books Other CGD Pubs Events Selected Works
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My guest this week is Mead Over, one of the world’s leading experts on the global response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We discuss his new book, Achieving an Aids Transition: Preventing Infections to Sustain Treatment. The key idea is simple but powerful. Mead argues that, instead of reaching vainly...
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This brief summarizes the recommendations in Achieving an AIDS Transition to use focused policies and well-designed incentives to finally bring the AIDS epidemic under control.
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Five million people in poor countries are receiving AIDS treatment, but international AIDS policy is still in crisis. This book shows how to reach an “AIDS transition,” which would keep AIDS deaths down by sustaining treatment while pushing new infections even lower, so that the total number of...
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In this paper, the authors set out to study how increased access to antiretroviral therapy affects sexual behavior in Mozambique. The researchers found that greater access to antiretroviral therapy led Mozambicans to perceive HIV/AIDS as less dangerous and to engage in more risky sexual behavior....
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Using panel data from Mozambique collected in 2007 and 2008, the authors explore the impact of the food crisis on the welfare of households living with HIV/AIDS. While HIV households have not suffered more from the crisis than others, infected people who experienced a negative income shock also...
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Funding for HIV/AIDS has increased massively in the past few years. But is the money being used in the best possible way? In this short clip, CGD experts Nandini Oomman and Mead Over describe the HIV/AIDS monitor initiative which analyzes how PEPFAR, The Global Fund, and the World Bank...
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In the final installation of a three-part series, Mead Over estimates the fiscal burden of international AIDS treatment programs, and suggests ways that donors, governments, and patients can sustain current treatments while preventing future cases.
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Even as the cost of treating HIV/AIDS has fallen dramatically, the number of people newly infected has remained high. What can be done to reverse this trend and finally defeat this disease? This week on the Wonkcast, I’m joined by Mead Over, a senior fellow here at the Center for Global...
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This essay proposes ways to improve the effectiveness of HIV prevention by strengthening incentives for both measurement and achievement. It builds upon a companion essay that proposes an “AIDS Transition”—that is, a gradual reduction in the number of people infected with HIV even as those...
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Recognizing the donors’ obligation to sustain financing for the millions of AIDS patient who would not be alive today without it, this essay proposes a dynamic paradigm for the struggle with the AIDS epidemic—“the AIDS transition” —and argues that to most rapidly achieve an AIDS...
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Five million people in poor countries are receiving AIDS treatment, but international AIDS policy is still in crisis. This book shows how to reach an “AIDS transition,” which would keep AIDS deaths down by sustaining treatment while pushing new infections even lower, so that the total number of...
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Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN, David Gergen joined CGD president Nancy Birdsall, and CGD senior fellows who authored essays in our...
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This brief summarizes the recommendations in Achieving an AIDS Transition to use focused policies and well-designed incentives to finally bring the AIDS epidemic under control.
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The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President shows how modest changes in U.S. policies could greatly improve the lives of poor people in developing countries, thus fostering greater stability, security, and prosperity globally and at home. Center for Global...
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Recognizing the donors’ obligation to sustain financing for the millions of AIDS patient who would not be alive today without it, this essay proposes a dynamic paradigm for the struggle with the AIDS epidemic—“the AIDS transition” —and argues that to most rapidly achieve an AIDS...
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Using panel data from Mozambique collected in 2007 and 2008, the authors explore the impact of the food crisis on the welfare of households living with HIV/AIDS. While HIV households have not suffered more from the crisis than others, infected people who experienced a negative income shock also...
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U.S. global AIDS spending is helping to prolong the lives of more than a million people, yet this success contains the seeds of a future crisis. Escalating treatment costs coupled with neglected prevention measures mean that AIDS spending is growing so rapidly that it threatens to squeeze out U.S....
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This essay proposes ways to improve the effectiveness of HIV prevention by strengthening incentives for both measurement and achievement. It builds upon a companion essay that proposes an “AIDS Transition”—that is, a gradual reduction in the number of people infected with HIV even as those...
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In this paper, the authors set out to study how increased access to antiretroviral therapy affects sexual behavior in Mozambique. The researchers found that greater access to antiretroviral therapy led Mozambicans to perceive HIV/AIDS as less dangerous and to engage in more risky sexual behavior....
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This paper proposes a cash-on-delivery approach to reward AIDS programs in accordance with the number of verifiable HIV infections they avert.
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Achieving an AIDS Transition: Preventing Infections to Sustain Treatment
- Aug 15, 2011
Five million people in poor countries are receiving AIDS treatment, but international AIDS policy is still in crisis. This book shows how to reach an “AIDS transition,” which would keep AIDS deaths down by sustaining treatment while pushing new infections even lower, so that the total number of...
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Sustaining and Leveraging AIDS Treatment
- Jun 1, 2010
In the final installation of a three-part series, Mead Over estimates the fiscal burden of international AIDS treatment programs, and suggests ways that donors, governments, and patients can sustain current treatments while preventing future cases.
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Using Incentives to Prevent HIV Infections
- May 24, 2010
This essay proposes ways to improve the effectiveness of HIV prevention by strengthening incentives for both measurement and achievement. It builds upon a companion essay that proposes an “AIDS Transition”—that is, a gradual reduction in the number of people infected with HIV even as those...
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The Global AIDS Transition: A Feasible Objective for AIDS Policy
- May 17, 2010
Recognizing the donors’ obligation to sustain financing for the millions of AIDS patient who would not be alive today without it, this essay proposes a dynamic paradigm for the struggle with the AIDS epidemic—“the AIDS transition” —and argues that to most rapidly achieve an AIDS...
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Cross-Country Data on AIDS Treatment and HIV Prevalence in 2006-07
- Jun 5, 2009
This dataset compiles selected global variables on AIDS and its treatment and prevention. The data are in the format developed by the Stata statistical software corporation and are intended for use with Over and McCarthy's AIDSCost package for the purpose of projecting the future budgetary cost of...
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Taking Prevention to Scale: Lessons from India's Mukta Project
- May 25, 2010
The "Mukta" (meaning "Freedom") Project, as it is locally known, is an initiative of Pathfinder International, a partner of the Gates Foundation/Avahan Project in India. Pathfinder International works in 10 districts of Maharashtra state in India to reduce the prevalence of STIs and HIV/AIDS among...
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Adapting Aid Criteria to Development Goals
- Apr 24, 2009
Join us for a discussion with Patrick Guillaumont, President of Fondation pour les études et recherches sur le développement international (Foundation for Studies and Research for International Development), Professor at Université d'Auvergne (CERDI), and Member of the UN Committee for...
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Why HIV/AIDS is Still Exceptional
- Apr 20, 2009
Please join us for a discussion with Dr. Alan Whiteside, where he will examine the origins of AIDS exceptionalism and how it has helped and hindered our response to the epidemic. Whiteside will ask if exceptionalism is still a useful concept in light of our current knowledge about the epidemic, the...
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Non-CGD Publications
- Assesment Paper: Treatment by Mead Over and Geoffrey Garnett. (2011). Copenhagen Consensus Center, Copenhagen, Denmark.
- HIV prevention costs and program scale: data from the PANCEA project in five low and middle-income countries BMC Health Services Research, 2007, 7 (1), 108.
- Over, Mead et al., "The economics of effective AIDS treatment in Thailand," AIDS 21 Suppl 4 (July): S105-S116 (2007). Based on the previously pulished book: The Economics of Effective AIDS Treatment Evaluating Policy Options for Thailand World Bank, Washington, DC (2006).
- Antiretroviral therapy and HIV prevention in India: modeling costs and consequences of policy options, Over, M. et al., Sex Transm.Dis. 33 (10 Suppl): S145-S152 (2006).
- Sexually Transmitted Infections by Sevgi Aral and Mead Over, with Lisa Manhart and King Holmes. (2006) Chapter 17 in D. Jamison et al (eds.) Disease Control Priorities.
- Will a global subsidy of artemisinin-based combination treatment (ACT) for malaria delay the emergence of resistance and save lives? Health Affairs, 25, no. 2 (2006): 325-336. (version with demand curves)
- Impregnated Nets or DDT Residual Spraying? Field Effectiveness of Malaria Prevention Techniques in the Solomon Islands, 1993-99, with Patricia Graves, Bernard Bakote’e, Raman Velayudhan, Peter Waleaulo, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, August, 2004, Vol. 71, No. 2 Supplement.
- HIV/AIDS Treatment and Prevention in India Modeling the Costs and Consequences (2004) with Peter Heywood, Julian Gold, Indrani Gupta, Subhash Hira, Elliot Marseille. Human Development Network Health, Nutrition, and Population Series. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
- Impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the health sectors of developing countries. (2004). In The macroeconomics of HIV/AIDS. Edited by Markus Haacker. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund.
- "Evaluating the Impact of Organizational Reforms in Hospitals," with Naoko Watanabe, Chapter 3 in A. Preker and A.Harding (eds.) Innovations in health service delivery: The corporatization of public hospitals. World Bank, March 2003
- Sources of Financial Assistance for Households Suffering and Adult Death in Kagera, Tanzania with M.Lundberg and P.Mujinjia. The South African Journal of Economics, 2000, 68 (5) and Working Paper No. 2508, Development Research Group, Infrastructure and Environment, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
- The Public Interest in a Private Disease: The Government’s role in STD Control, chapter 1 of K.K. Holmes, et al (eds.), Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 3d ed., New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities in a Global Epidemic. with Martha Ainsworth, World Bank, 1997, 1999. Summary in English, French, Spanish.
- Confronting AIDS: Evidence from the developing World, (1998) with Martha Ainsworth and Lieve Fransen (eds.) European Union.
- “The effects of societal variables on urban rates of HIV infection in developing countries: An exploratory analysis”, Part I Chapter 2 in Confronting AIDS: Evidence from the developing World, (1998) with Martha Ainsworth and Lieve Fransen (eds.) European Union.
- HIV Infection and Sexually Transmitted Diseases with Peter Piot. (1993) In D.T Jamison and others, eds. Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press, pp-455-527.
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