Senior fellow Mead Over was mentioned in a Slate article on the Copenhagen Consensus and fighting AIDS.
From the Article
It is dangerous to believe that the end of AIDS is in sight. About 30 million people around the world live with HIV, and another 30 million are likely to become infected in the next decade if current trends persist. Funding from developed governments is dropping—a trend that must be reversed. But we also need to acknowledge that billions of dollars have been spent on well-meaning attempts to save lives, and there has been an alarming lack of high-quality evaluation of how these investments have performed.
This is true not only of abstinence campaigns, for which there is no evidence of effectiveness, but also for many other mainstays of the AIDS response. On a systemic level, we do not know what works, where, and why—or how to replicate our successes.
In the project RethinkHIV, the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the Rush Foundation asked 30 of the world’s top HIV economists, supported by epidemiologists, demographers, and medical professionals to analyze the most promising responses to the epidemic in the world’s worst-hit region, sub-Saharan Africa. They were asked to examine what could be achieved with extra investments in six key areas: prevention of sexual transmission, reduction of nonsexual transmission, treatment of those who have the disease, initiatives to use social policy and health-system strengthening to fight HIV/AIDS, and vaccine research.
The resulting research papers offer the first-ever comprehensive attempt at cost-benefit analysis of AIDS priorities. Economics can offer a fresh perspective by showing us the overall value to society of competing spending options. Among worthwhile investments, some are very costly and achieve little good; others are remarkably cheap and incredibly effective. Whether on AIDS or other problems, additional funds should be spent first where we can achieve the highest return for our money.