Clement Adamba holds a Master of Philosophy degree in Development Studies from the University of Ghana and a Bachelor of Education degree in Social Studies (with Economics option) from the University of Education, Winneba. His research interest includes analysis of health policies, burden of health shocks, and household vulnerability and poverty issues. Clement has written a couple of papers on health insurance in Ghana, Buruli ulcer disease, household vulnerability and assets holding, among others. For his PhD, Clement is examining households' exposure to the Medical Poverty trap and how Health insurance impact on this phenomenon in Ghana. Synopsis of PhD Thesis The health of a people is of utmost importance to a country’s poverty reduction efforts. Ill-health consequently is a threat/challenge to poverty reduction and therefore critical for development. The relationship between (ill)health and poverty run in both directions. Poor households live in unhealthy conditions and work in more dangerous jobs that leave them more vulnerable to diseases and injuries. And when diseases strike, poor people have less access to reliable and quality health services. Ill-health on the other hand affects manpower supply, affects income levels, reduce household savings and plunge households into poverty. Where households are unable to benefit from social health protection mechanisms, rising out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure may lead to a situation where poverty and ill health re-enforce each other in a spiraling sequence, setting a "poverty trap" in the process and making it difficult or extremely impossible to escape. This has been described as the medical poverty trap (Whitehead et al., 2001). The a priori expectation is that in an environment where social health protection mechanisms exist and are effective, exposure to the medical poverty trap will be considerably reduced. Ghana implemented a national health insurance scheme in 2004 as a social health protection mechanism. The aim of this study is to first of all examine households' level of exposure to the medical poverty trap which has received limited discussion in Ghana; and secondly, the impact of health insurance on this phenomenon. This will enlarge our appreciation of the impact of health shocks on poverty and the extent of impact of various pro-poor policies on households' health and poverty outcomes