Interesting, are you concerned that in a full-scale nuclear war that most places in the northern hemisphere would be unsafe due to military targets outside the cities and fallout?
What do you think about this Q&A on Quora about where it would be safest in the event of a nuclear war? Most of the suggested safe locations are in the southern hemisphere like New Zealand.
One possible area for exploration is around Schistosomiasis prevention, as reinfection rates appear to be high after deworming campaigns. PMA2020 has launched an annual survey to measure the impact of Schistosomiasis control programs in Uganda.
Johns Hopkins University/Center for Communication Programs in Uganda will be conducting a mass media campaign to promote Schistosomiasis prevention in fall 2017 before deworming day. The 2017 PMA2020 survey should be able to measure changes in knowledge, attitudes and practices after the mass media campaign. If there is funding in place, the 2018 PMA2020 survey may be able to measure the impact of the mass media campaign on actual infection rates.
Does anyone have ideas for exploration around Schistosomiasis prevention? With the PMA2020 survey, there is a unique opportunity for data collection to help evaluate potential Schistosomiasis prevention programs.
Disclosure: I am helping fund both the data collection and mass media program in Uganda
What would an ideal EA event look like to you? Would you like to see more discussion on earning to give and where to donate? Do you feel like earning to give is underappreciated in the EA community?
It seems plausible that http://nutritionfacts.org/ might be one of the most effective charities for saving lives in the US. Michael Greger and his team distill nutrition research to provide practical tips on what to eat to prevent heart disease, cancer and other top killers. The website has more than one million hits a month, so it seems likely that his research saves hundreds if not thousands of lives a year.
Their 2014 revenue was $571,178. So it seems plausible that nutritionfacts is saving lives at around approximately $1,000 per life saved.
As a bonus, he advocates for a plant based diet, so it seems like his research could lead to a reduction of factory farming. I have wondered if they have more room for funding for advertising their website.
There are studies worth doing now that can be done now but aren’t being done, such as a high-quality studies to determine whether certain interventions work to improve animal welfare
I'm hoping to help fund a randomized control trial (RCT) in Burkina Faso or another very low income area to test whether providing free family planning service vouchers increases uptake.
As discussed in http://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/the-price-is-wrong , uptake of preventative health products increases significantly when they are provided for free to the poor. It would be interesting to see if the same holds true for contraceptives.
There is a great slideshow on what we have learned from free contraceptive programs.
I agree and think that posting about plans early on would be very good.
I'm hoping to help fund family planning randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the future. The reason is that there are very few family planning RCTs. With more RCTs, family planning funders should be able to direct funding towards programs that have higher impact. I wrote more about family planning on an earlier cause selection post.
I'm seeking people interested in helping to find possible implementing organizations and researchers as well as co-funders. I plan to post on the Family Planning 2020 community to seek expert feedback. I'm happy to discuss my reasoning here as well. I'm also wondering if there is an online community for evidence generation using RCTs where I could post my plans to get feedback.
In particular, I’m interested in studies of using mobile phones for reproductive health and family planning education. This is inspired by this blog post highlighting research showing that interactive SMS messages may reduce adolescent pregnancy in Ghana.
The rationale for focusing on mobile is the potential to create present and future demand for family planning among youth. Because SMS and interactive voice response can be automated, there may be potential to scale up a mobile based program cost effectively.
Interesting, are you concerned that in a full-scale nuclear war that most places in the northern hemisphere would be unsafe due to military targets outside the cities and fallout?
What do you think about this Q&A on Quora about where it would be safest in the event of a nuclear war? Most of the suggested safe locations are in the southern hemisphere like New Zealand.
One possible area for exploration is around Schistosomiasis prevention, as reinfection rates appear to be high after deworming campaigns. PMA2020 has launched an annual survey to measure the impact of Schistosomiasis control programs in Uganda.
Johns Hopkins University/Center for Communication Programs in Uganda will be conducting a mass media campaign to promote Schistosomiasis prevention in fall 2017 before deworming day. The 2017 PMA2020 survey should be able to measure changes in knowledge, attitudes and practices after the mass media campaign. If there is funding in place, the 2018 PMA2020 survey may be able to measure the impact of the mass media campaign on actual infection rates.
Does anyone have ideas for exploration around Schistosomiasis prevention? With the PMA2020 survey, there is a unique opportunity for data collection to help evaluate potential Schistosomiasis prevention programs.
Disclosure: I am helping fund both the data collection and mass media program in Uganda
This year I'm supporting the Male Contraception Initiative to help fund research into non-hormonal male contraceptives.
The rationale for this is:
I got interested in male contraception after reading this post about vasalgel: https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/4gvd40/vasalgel/
Some concerns are:
What would an ideal EA event look like to you? Would you like to see more discussion on earning to give and where to donate? Do you feel like earning to give is underappreciated in the EA community?
It seems plausible that http://nutritionfacts.org/ might be one of the most effective charities for saving lives in the US. Michael Greger and his team distill nutrition research to provide practical tips on what to eat to prevent heart disease, cancer and other top killers. The website has more than one million hits a month, so it seems likely that his research saves hundreds if not thousands of lives a year.
Their 2014 revenue was $571,178. So it seems plausible that nutritionfacts is saving lives at around approximately $1,000 per life saved.
As a bonus, he advocates for a plant based diet, so it seems like his research could lead to a reduction of factory farming. I have wondered if they have more room for funding for advertising their website.
Giving What We Can published a report on mental health in the developing world: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/cause/mental-health-neurological-disorders/
GiveWell recently funded a RCT to test a mindset intervention: http://www.givewell.org/international/charities/ipa/may-2016-grant
There is evidence linking diet to mental health described on http://nutritionfacts.org/topics/mental-health/
There is a planned program to fund empirical research for animal advocacy https://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/introducing-our-new-advocacy-research-program-officer/
I'm hoping to help fund a randomized control trial (RCT) in Burkina Faso or another very low income area to test whether providing free family planning service vouchers increases uptake.
As discussed in http://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/the-price-is-wrong , uptake of preventative health products increases significantly when they are provided for free to the poor. It would be interesting to see if the same holds true for contraceptives.
There is a great slideshow on what we have learned from free contraceptive programs.
I plan to post updates on https://www.facebook.com/groups/EffectiveFPCharities/
I agree and think that posting about plans early on would be very good.
I'm hoping to help fund family planning randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the future. The reason is that there are very few family planning RCTs. With more RCTs, family planning funders should be able to direct funding towards programs that have higher impact. I wrote more about family planning on an earlier cause selection post.
I'm seeking people interested in helping to find possible implementing organizations and researchers as well as co-funders. I plan to post on the Family Planning 2020 community to seek expert feedback. I'm happy to discuss my reasoning here as well. I'm also wondering if there is an online community for evidence generation using RCTs where I could post my plans to get feedback.
In particular, I’m interested in studies of using mobile phones for reproductive health and family planning education. This is inspired by this blog post highlighting research showing that interactive SMS messages may reduce adolescent pregnancy in Ghana.
The rationale for focusing on mobile is the potential to create present and future demand for family planning among youth. Because SMS and interactive voice response can be automated, there may be potential to scale up a mobile based program cost effectively.