Although a diverse set of actors is currently involved in providing health microinsurance to low-income people, reach and enrolment have been limited, particularly in rural areas. For most low-income people in the developing world, the concept of insurance—to protect against the cost of illness, accident and extended ill health—is new, untested, and not well understood.
To fill the gap, Freedom from Hunger seeks to develop a consumer health microinsurance module that will provide microinsurers, MFIs, and other organizations with an effective educational tool to equip low-income people to make informed and wise decisions and help them evaluate, access, and effectively utilize available health insurance products.
In the first phase of the project, Freedom from Hunger will design, develop, and field-test a flexible, adaptable, and replicable consumer education module targeted for low- income families; in a second phase, Freedom from Hunger will evaluate the impact of the module in collaboration with a health microinsurance scheme. The analysis aims to look at changes in consumer health-insurance knowledge; rate of enrolment or take-up; disenrollment; and ability of consumers to access and utilize the services their policies would cover.
The project will target one or more vulnerable groups amongst the ‘chronically hungry poor’ who lack access to health insurance and who have correspondingly poor health status. The groups have below-poverty-level incomes, high levels of illiteracy, and include predominantly women and families.
Freedom from Hunger is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 1946 and working in 17 countries in West Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Its mission is to bring innovative and sustainable ‘self-help’ solutions to the fight against chronic hunger and poverty. Its core activities focus on designing and disseminating integrated financial services and lifeskills training that equip the rural poor to escape poverty and achieve household food security. The organization’s experience and expertise extend across multiple sectors that address the causes of chronic hunger and poverty, including microfinance, livelihood development, health and nutrition, household food security and empowerment of women.