How community health workers help protect infants during droughts

Climate change is making droughts more frequent and severe in many parts of the world, but can stronger primary healthcare help communities cope with the health impacts? 

In a study based in rural Uganda, researchers Martin Björkman Nyqvist (Stockholm School of Economics), Tillmann von Carnap (University of Oslo), Andrea Guariso (University of Milano-Bicocca), and Jakob Svensson (Stockholm University) combine weather data with a randomized healthcare program to explore whether community health workers can protect infants when low rainfall puts families under greater strain.

Scroll your way through the story below to see what they discovered.

Research details

This research visualization is based on the paper "Weather shocks, infant mortality, and adaptation: Experimental evidence from Uganda", published in Journal of Development Economics in 2025.

Authors:

  • Martina Björkman Nyqvist, Professor, Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics; Director of the Development and Environmental Economics Platform at the House of Sustainable Society
  • Tillmann von Carnap, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Oslo
  • Andrea Guariso, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Milan-Bicocca
  • Jakob Svensson, Professor of Economics, Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University
Read the full paper