Elie thinks that fistula is worse than death. jsalvati disagrees. I’d rather bring someone to full health than save an infant’s life. Ryan agrees, but Basti does not and Ron Noble emphatically does not. It’s possible that we would all agree if we knew more about the lives of people in the developing world, or…
The GiveWell Blog
All posts by Holden
Donors don’t have to pay for their own philanthropic advice
Tactical Philanthropy: Sooner or later, donors are going to start being willing to pay for advice on how to give. This will transform philanthropy. I agree that donors should be willing to pay for advice on how to give. I certainly would have done so back when I was in the for-profit sector, if I…
Health education is tricky
In theory, you can fight HIV/AIDS by teaching safe sexual behavior; fight diarrhea by promoting hygienic practices; reduce child mortality by educating mothers; etc. However: Research on the effectiveness of these sorts of programs is thin; and programs that combine documented effectiveness with clear replication models are, so far as we can tell, rare to…
Direct food aid?
Both the Disease Control Priorities report (DCP) and Copenhagen Consensus (CC) acknowledge malnutrition as an extremely widespread and damaging problem, and both discuss a variety of interventions including breastfeeding promotion, vitamin supplementation, and fortification. Yet both give hardly any space to the idea of direct food aid, i.e., providing healthy food (or the money necessary…
Vaccinations
According to the Disease Control Priorities Project, expanding vaccination is an excellent fit for donors who want proven, cost-effective, scalable ways of helping people. According to this table (more detailed version on page 401 of the full report), both South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have relatively low levels of existing coverage (50-58%), and vaccinating more…
Where does a donor fit in?
I get two very different pictures of how aid funding works, depending on whether I’m looking at my options as a donor (as I’ve been doing for the last couple of years) or reading papers intended for policy makers (Disease Control Priorities report, Report of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health). The latter sources focus…