Tobenna Anekwe

Tobenna D. Anekwe

Health Economist
202-694-5231
tanekwe@ers.usda.gov

Briefly

Tobenna D. Anekwe is a health economist in the Diet, Safety, and Health Economics Branch in ERS’s Food Economics Division. His research interests include understanding how nutrition, diet, and diet-related health are influenced by determinants such as the price of healthy food, access to health care (e.g., getting a diabetes diagnosis), and time spent in food-related activities like grocery shopping and food preparation.

Background

In the past, Tobenna worked as an analyst at Housing Works in New York City, evaluating the effectiveness of Housing Works programs that serve homeless people living with HIV and help them achieve self-sufficiency. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank.

Education

Tobenna holds a ScD in global health and population (with an economics focus) from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He received his master of public health in social epidemiology from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and his bachelor’s in sociology and health policy from Harvard College.

Selected Publications

Anekwe, Tobenna D., Marie-Louise Newell, Frank Tanser, Deenan Pillay, and Till Bärnighausen. 2015. "The causal effect of childhood measles vaccination on educational attainment: a mother fixed-effects study in rural South Africa," Vaccine, 33(38): 5020-26.

Barofsky, Jeremy, Tobenna D. Anekwe, and Claire Chase. 2015. "Malaria eradication and economic outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from Uganda," Journal of Health Economics, 44: 118-36.

Anekwe, Tobenna D. and Ilya Rahkovsky. 2014. "The association between food prices and the blood sugar level of Americans with type 2 diabetes," American Journal of Public Health, 104(4): 678-85.

Anekwe, Tobenna D. and Ilya Rahkovsky. 2013. "Economic costs and benefits of healthy eating," Current Obesity Reports, 2(3): 225-24.

Anekwe, Tobenna D. and S. Kumar. 2012. "The effect of a vaccination program on child anthropometry: evidence from India's Universal Immunization Program," Journal of Public Health, 34(4): 489-97.

Anekwe, Tobenna D. 2010. "Profits and plagiarism: the case of medical ghostwriting," Bioethics, 24(6): 267-72.