Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Desa SIAGA (loosely “alert villages”) is an innovate program in Indonesia beginning in 2006 that harnesses the power of the village community to address maternal mortality and infectious diseases.  Villages become “alert” through public media campaigns on the dangers to watch for during pregnancy, delivery and the post-partum period and a series of infrastructure improvements (addition of community health post, one midwife and two community health volunteers).  Previous evaluations of Desa SIAGA have used a post-test only strategy with self-reported exposure to evaluate the intervention.  This paper improves on the previous literature by applying a more rigorous quasi-experimental design – difference-in-difference – and controlling for endogenous program placement within villages.  The impact of Desa SIAGA is evaluated in two ways - both at the individual level and by aggregating to the village level.  Nationally representative data on birth outcomes from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) spanning 1997 to 2012 (e.g. planning for delivery, knowledge of pregnancy and delivery complications and choice of delivery location) is combined with data on whether a village is part of the Desa SIAGA program.  Because this paper uses data from births both before and after the intervention while controlling for program placement and varying village trajectories over time it provides a more rigorous evaluation of the program.