Turning Trash into Social Value: Can a Private Sector Model Work for Poor Women in India?

In The Shadow List, State Department crisis expert Judd Ryker is chasing an American banker who’s disappeared after falling for a Nigerian scam. Meanwhile, his CIA wife Jessica is hunting a notorious Russian mob boss. Little do they know, they’re pulling on opposite ends of the same dangerous thread. Throw in Chinese oil companies under attack, corrupt American politicians, a kidnapped NBA star, and an undercover FBI sting operation and it’s the latest diplomatic thriller ripped from the headlines by CGD senior fellow Todd Moss. 

The 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic broke out and affected thousands of people at a time when there were no medicines approved to treat or prevent Ebola. Poor infrastructure, capacity gaps, widespread mistrust, and disagreements over the design and ethical nature of any clinical trials complicated efforts to conduct research on investigational drugs and vaccines. In the wake of the outbreak, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine tasked a committee with analyzing the clinical trials carried out during the outbreak and developing recommendations to improve the implementation of such trials in the future. In this session, committee members Gerald Keusch and David Peters will discuss findings from the committee’s recently released report and the kind of governance structures that need to be in place for effective international coordination and collaboration.

As part of its national health reforms, El Salvador assigned community health teams to 98 of its poorest municipalities. While some municipalities received traditional (input-based) aid to support the program and others received national funding, some municipalities received funding through the Salud Mesoamerica Initiative (SMI), a results-based aid (RBA) program focused on maternal and child health targets. In this seminar, Sebastian Martinez will present on his new research with Pedro Bernal and Pablo Celhay, which uses a difference-in-difference design to assess whether municipalities that received RBA funding were more effective at delivering health services. Martinez will also discuss the program's spillover effects on men and the elderly, as well as its implications for population health.