Jacob Bor

About

Jacob Bor, ScD, is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Global Health and Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. His research applies the analytical tools of economics and data science to the study of population health. His research interests include HIV treatment and prevention in southern Africa, structural causes of health disparities in the U.S, and intersections of health, politics, and development. Prior to his graduate training at Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Bor worked with an HIV-prevention NGO in Botswana, Lesotho, and South Africa. He is a faculty affiliate of BU's Global Development Policy Center and Senior Research at the Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office in South Africa.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Economics
• Environmental health
• Demography
• Demographic economics
• Public administration
• Economic growth
• Nursing

Selected publications

• Neighbourhood income and physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2020 · 365 citations

  DOI

• Association Between Receipt of Unemployment Insurance and Food Insecurity Among People Who Lost Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States

  JAMA Network Open · 2021 · 196 citations

  Importance: More than 50 million US residents have lost work during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and food insecurity has increased. Objective: To evaluate the association between receipt of unemployment insurance, including a $600/wk federal supplement between April and July, and food insecurity among people who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used difference-in-differences analysis of longitudinal data from…

  DOI

• COVID-19 and excess mortality in the United States: A county-level analysis

  PLoS Medicine · 2021 · 169 citations

  BACKGROUND: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) excess deaths refer to increases in mortality over what would normally have been expected in the absence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several prior studies have calculated excess deaths in the United States but were limited to the national or state level, precluding an examination of area-level variation in excess mortality and excess deaths not assigned to COVID-19. In this study, we take advantage of county-level variation in COVID-19 mortality to e…

  DOI

• Public policy and health in the Trump era

  The Lancet · 2021 · 147 citations

  PublisherDOI

• The impact of the PEPFAR funding freeze on HIV deaths and infections: a mathematical modelling study of seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa

  EClinicalMedicine · 2025-04-25 · 44 citations

  articleOpen access

  <h2>Summary</h2><h3>Background</h3> On January 24, 2025, the United States government issued an executive order to freeze all foreign aid programs, including The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), for 90 days. A limited waiver option became available, but its implementation remains incomplete. We estimated the impact of these policy changes on HIV deaths and new infections in seven sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries—Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Economic, health, and behavioral dimensions of HIV treatment scale-up

  NIH · $154k · 2015–2019

• Economic, health, and behavioral dimensions of HIV treatment scale-up

  NIH · $459k · 2015–2020

• Evaluating UTT with a National HIV Cohort to Optimize South Africa's HIV Response (ENCORE)

  NIH · $1.8M · 2020–2026

Frequent coauthors

• Till Bärnighausen

  University Hospital Heidelberg

  141 shared

• Matthew P. Fox

  University of the Witwatersrand

  115 shared

• Frank Tanser

  University of KwaZulu-Natal

  71 shared

• Karen R. Jacobson

  Boston University

  58 shared

• Sydney Rosen

  Boston University

  57 shared

• Helen E. Jenkins

  Boston University

  55 shared

• Robin M. Warren

  South African Medical Research Council

  52 shared

• Sarah V. Leavitt

  51 shared

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