Andrew Siroka, BA

Project Title/Research Interests: The impact of poverty and social protection on tuberculosis

Background:
Mr. Siroka has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan with an emphasis in statistics. Andrew worked as a research associate at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Health Economics Resource Center (HERC) for five years prior to enrolling at UCLA. During his time at the VA, Mr. Siroka published research on dialysis care, which influenced VA Palo Alto’s decision to scale back on hemodialysis frequency under certain conditions.  More recently, he has been working at the World Health Organization’s Global TB Program as a health economist.  His work at WHO has focused on analyzing national TB expenditures with an aim of promoting cost-effective interventions and guiding the policies of national treatment programs. Mr. Siroka has passed his comprehensive examinations and is currently working on his dissertation, with Dr. Ninez Ponce as his Chair.  His research agenda is to explore the impact of national poverty reduction policies, such as conditional cash transfer programs and minimum wage laws, on health outcomes. He plans to utilize Dean Jody Heymann’s WORLD policy database, in combination with public Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), to investigate these relationships.