Sean

Sean Sylvia, PhD

  • Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, University of North Carolina
  • Network Faculty Affiliate, Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions

Biography

Sean Sylvia, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. As a health and development economist, Dr. Sylvia’s research focuses on designing and evaluating innovative approaches to improve the delivery of health services in developing countries. In past and ongoing projects, he has studied the design of performance-based incentives for providers, the implementation of school-based health and nutrition programs, community health worker interventions to improve early childhood health and development, and the measurement of and interventions to improve the quality of primary care in low-resource settings.

Fluent in Mandarin, Dr. Sylvia has long-standing collaborations with researchers at a number of universities in China where he has directed several large-scale surveys and randomized trials. Prior to joining UNC, he worked as an Assistant Professor in the School of Economics at Renmin University of China. He also previously worked for the World Bank and was a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Dr. Sylvia received his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland.

publications

Journal Articles
March 2024

Willingness-to-pay for Early Childhood Development: A Field Experiment in Western China

Author(s)
cover link Willingness-to-pay for Early Childhood Development: A Field Experiment in Western China
Journal Articles
February 2024

Process Quality, Diagnosis Quality, and Patient Satisfaction of Primary Care in Rural Western China: A Study Using Standardized Pateints

Author(s)
cover link Process Quality, Diagnosis Quality, and Patient Satisfaction of Primary Care in Rural Western China: A Study Using Standardized Pateints
Journal Articles
February 2024

The Medium-term Impact of a Micronutrient Powder Intervention on Anemia among Young Children in Rural China

Author(s)
cover link The Medium-term Impact of a Micronutrient Powder Intervention on Anemia among Young Children in Rural China