From the article:
Despite these successes, the researchers who advocate this approach — they're sometimes called "randomistas" — also worry that RCT's are still not being deployed frequently enough, and that even when they are done, policy makers often fail to apply the lessons.
This sense of mixed progress was evident at a recent conference organized by the Washington, D.C.-think tank Center for Global Development, where some of the most prominent randomistas gathered to take stock.
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Even at the World Bank and USAID, only a small portion of projects are subject to impact evaluations, agreed Amanda Glassman, chief operating officer and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Every year, her group does an exhaustive review to identify large-scale health programs that made a big impact. Of about 250 that they looked through this past year, "only 50 used rigorous methods to establish the attributable impact. And none of the very largest programs in global health had done any impact evaluation" of the type she argues are needed — including two major international nonprofit organizations: Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis as well as GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.
This doesn't mean the health products that these health programs use — medicines or vaccines, for instance — haven't been proven effective through, say, medical trials or studies of what happens to the incidence of disease when you vaccinate a certain population, explained Glassman.
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Glassman says that's not enough when "the challenge isn't just the biological effect of a pill or vaccine but how to get those pills or vaccines to those who need them." One question, for instance: Is it more effective to do an intensive one-week campaign in which health workers armed with vaccines fan out across a community than to provide routine vaccinations at health clinics.