Impact Evaluation for Evidence-Informed Global Health Interventions and Policies

Over the last decades, there has been a growing body of applied economic research aimed at developing and employing quantitative tools to obtain robust evidence for the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions and policies aimed at improving population health and related outcomes around the world. Major international policy and research organizations such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank or the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) have taken important steps toward more frequent and more rigorous causal impact evaluations to build a larger scientific evidence base for informing social and health policies and their corresponding program designs. These efforts toward building a broader evidence base for more “evidence-informed policy making” have resulted in more widespread use of empirical evaluations of global health policies and programs to obtain more robust evidence on “what works” in global health. This increasing evidence base in global health creates a growing need for health economists, public health and health policy researchers to understand and critically appraise impact evaluations of global health policies and programs and translate the existing scientific evidence into policy advise for governments, international organizations or other stakeholders who are considering the implementation, upscaling or financing of specific health policies in their local contexts. The aim of this course is to familiarize participants with key concepts and techniques of causal impact evaluations in global health and illustrate these based on case studies of existing global health policies and programs from around the world.

By the end of the course participants will:

• Have a basic understanding of key concepts of causal impact evaluation for global health;
• Be aware of the main strengths and weaknesses of commonly used impact evaluation techniques;
• Understand how causal impact evaluations can contribute to the scientific evidence base for evidence-informed global health policy making;
• Be able to critically appraise impact evaluations in terms of their internal and external validity and strengths/weaknesses for use in evidence-informed global health policymaking.

No prerequisites are needed for this introductory course. Familiarity with basic statistical concepts and estimation techniques may, however, be helpful.

• Introductory lectures on key concepts in impact evaluation for global health;
• Case analyses and presentations;
• Group discussions of case studies of major impact evaluations of different global health policies and programs from around the world.

To obtain the Certificate of completion and the 1 ECTS participants MUST:

• Attend at least 80% of the course;
• Attend the plenary(s) offered during the days of the course;
• Actively participate in the introductory lectures;
• Actively participate in group-based cases analyses, case presentations and case discussions.

The facilitators plans to be in Lugano, and the course will be held entirely on-site. In case of a change of regional policies (e.g., Covid) or personal reasons, the course could change to online or hybrid format. The course will take place at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).