Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Soc Sci Med. 2011 Sep;73(5):685-92. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.06.056. Epub 2011 Jul 23.
The article systematically reviews theory and existing empirical evidence on the health and welfare effects of integrating AIDS treatment with food assistance. While theoretical predictions point to possible improvements in health, consumption and ambiguous effects on labor supply, there are few empirical studies that used robust designs. Five empirical studies are reviewed and in two of them, food assistance improves nutritional status, especially when provided in the form of ready to use therapeutic feeding. However because of methodological concerns, the positive effects of food assistance on weight gain warrant cautious interpretation. One study found a positive association between food assistance and adherence. While no quantitative study evaluated welfare effects, respondents in a qualitative study self-reported the resumption of labor activities, increased dietary diversity and food consumption. There is still limited evidence on the role of duration of AIDS treatment and programmatic aspects like targeting, composition and duration of food assistance. The major conclusion of the paper is that there is still need for further research based on robust designs which investigates both health and household welfare effects.
本文系统地回顾了将艾滋病治疗与食品援助相结合对健康和福利影响的理论和现有实证证据。虽然理论预测指出健康、消费和对劳动力供给的影响可能存在不确定性，但很少有实证研究采用稳健的设计。本文回顾了五项实证研究，其中两项研究表明，食品援助改善了营养状况，特别是以即食治疗性喂养的形式提供时。然而，由于方法学上的考虑，食品援助对体重增加的积极影响需要谨慎解释。一项研究发现，食品援助与坚持治疗之间存在正相关关系。虽然没有定量研究评估福利影响，但定性研究中的受访者自我报告恢复了劳动活动，增加了饮食多样性和食物消费。关于艾滋病治疗的持续时间和方案方面（如目标、食品援助的组成和持续时间）的作用，仍有有限的证据。本文的主要结论是，仍然需要进一步开展基于稳健设计的研究，以调查健康和家庭福利的影响。
