Integrating Value for Money and Impact Evaluations: Issues, Institutions, and Opportunities

This mixed methods study investigates why fewer than one in five impact evaluations integrates a value-for-money analysis of the development intervention being evaluated. This study distills four main insights from combined analysis of 33 semi-structured and unstructured interviews, surveys of 497 policy makers and 16 journal editors, and portfolio analyses of World Bank and worldwide impact evaluations. The study finds that low levels of training in cost data collection and analysis methods, together with a lack of standardization of the value-for-money assumptions (e.g., time horizons, discount rates, and economic or financial cost accounting) limit value-for-money integration into impact evaluations. Further eroding researchers' incentives, demand for cost evidence from the journals that publish impact evaluations is mixed. Ill-defined standards of rigor undermine editors' capacity to evaluate the quality of value-for-money analysis when it is integrated with impact evaluation evidence. Institutional funders of impact evaluations do not consistently demand that cost analysis be integrated into their funded evaluations. This study finds no evidence in support of the myth that policymakers do not demand cost evidence. Rather, it finds that researchers have few ways of knowing what kind of analysis policymakers need and when they need it. Improving the stock of impact evaluators who are cross trained in value-for-money methods, establishing standards in what constitutes rigor in costing, resolving methodological issues, and improving linkages between policymakers and researchers would lead to greater integration of value-for-money methods in impact evaluations

Escollos y potencial de las encuestas telefónicas de alta frecuencia durante la COVID-19

Las encuestas telefónicas pueden ser especialmente útiles en épocas —como la pandemia actual— en las que es difícil realizarlas cara a cara, aunque pueden presentar desafíos

The impact of an insecticide treated bednet campaign on all-cause child mortality: A geospatial impact evaluation from the Democratic Republic of Congo

Objective To test the impact of a nationwide Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets [LLINs] distribution program in the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] on all-cause under-five child mortality exploiting subnational variation in malaria endemicity and the timing in the scale-up of the program across provinces. Design Geospatial Impact Evaluation using a difference-in-differences approach. Setting Democratic Republic of the Congo. Participants 52,656 children sampled in the 2007 and 2013/2014 DRC Demographic and Health Surveys. Interventions The analysis provides plausibly causal estimates of both average treatment effects of the LLIN distribution campaign and geospatial heterogeneity in these effects based on malaria endemicity. It compares the under-five, all-cause mortality for children pre- and post-LLIN campaign relative to children in those areas that had not yet been exposed to the campaign using a difference-in-differences model and controlling for year- and province-fixed effects, and province-level trends in mortality. Results We find that the campaign led to a 41% decline [3.7 percentage points, 95% CI 1.3 to 6.0] in under-5 mortality risk among children living in rural areas with malaria ecology above the sample median. Results were robust to controlling for household assets and the presence of other health aid programs. No effect was detected in children living in areas with malaria ecology below the median. Conclusion The findings of this paper make important contributions to the evidence base for the effectiveness of large scale-national LLIN campaigns against malaria. We found that the program was effective in areas of the DRC with the highest underlying risk of malaria. Targeting bednets to areas with greatest underlying risk for malaria may help to increase the efficiency of increasingly limited malaria resources but should be balanced against other malaria control concerns

Long-term effect of lifestyle intervention on adiposity, metabolic parameters, inflammation and physical fitness in obese children: a randomized controlled trial

Epidemiology in Pediatrics and Child Healt

Associations between anthropometric indicators in early life and low-grade inflammation, insulin resistance and lipid profile in adolescence

Background and AimsThe long-term relations between excessive adiposity in early childhood and unfavourable cardiometabolic profiles in later ages are not yet completely understood. We aimed to assess the associations between birth weight (BW) and BMI from 6 months to 6 years of age, with biomarkers indicative of low-grade inflammation, insulin resistance and lipid profiles in adolescence.Methods and ResultsRetrospective school-based study with 415 Portuguese adolescents (220 girls), mean age of 14.08±1.6 years old. Anthropometric data from birth to 6 years old was extracted from individual child health book records. Actual weight and height were measured and BMI calculated. Participants were classified at each time point as normal weight or overweight according to WHO reference values. Biomarkers were obtained from venous blood samples. Linear regressions were used to explore the associations between the biomarkers and early life anthropometric indicators. From 2 years onwards, BMI associated positively with the inflammatory score and HOMA-IR in adolescence. Children who were overweight/obese from 2 to 6 years of age presented significantly higher inflammatory score and HOMA-IR later in adolescence. TC/HDL ratio was also positively associated with BMI from the age of 5 years onwards. The associations between BMI and cardiometabolic outcomes remained positive in adolescence, with overweight adolescents presenting a higher inflammatory score, HOMA-IR and TC/HDL than normal weight adolescents.ConclusionA high BMI from an early age was consistently associated with worse inflammatory and lipid profiles and insulin resistance in adolescence. No associations were found between BW and the same studied outcomes

Direct Identification of the Meloidogyne incognita Secretome Reveals Proteins with Host Cell Reprogramming Potential

The root knot nematode, Meloidogyne incognita, is an obligate parasite that causes significant damage to a broad range of host plants. Infection is associated with secretion of proteins surrounded by proliferating cells. Many parasites are known to secrete effectors that interfere with plant innate immunity, enabling infection to occur; they can also release pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs, e.g., flagellin) that trigger basal immunity through the nematode stylet into the plant cell. This leads to suppression of innate immunity and reprogramming of plant cells to form a feeding structure containing multinucleate giant cells. Effectors have generally been discovered using genetics or bioinformatics, but M. incognita is non-sexual and its genome sequence has not yet been reported. To partially overcome these limitations, we have used mass spectrometry to directly identify 486 proteins secreted by M. incognita. These proteins contain at least segmental sequence identity to those found in our 3 reference databases (published nematode proteins; unpublished M. incognita ESTs; published plant proteins). Several secreted proteins are homologous to plant proteins, which they may mimic, and they contain domains that suggest known effector functions (e.g., regulating the plant cell cycle or growth). Others have regulatory domains that could reprogram cells. Using in situ hybridization we observed that most secreted proteins were produced by the subventral glands, but we found that phasmids also secreted proteins. We annotated the functions of the secreted proteins and classified them according to roles they may play in the development of root knot disease. Our results show that parasite secretomes can be partially characterized without cognate genomic DNA sequence. We observed that the M. incognita secretome overlaps the reported secretome of mammalian parasitic nematodes (e.g., Brugia malayi), suggesting a common parasitic behavior and a possible conservation of function between metazoan parasites of plants and animals

The pitfalls and potential of high-frequency phone surveys during COVID-19

Phone surveys can be particularly useful in times – such as during the current pandemic – when it is difficult to conduct face-to-face surveys, but can present challenges