Building better evidence for health: GDN takes action with $5.9 million call for proposals

The Global Development Network has recently released a call for proposals to promote innovative health programs in the developing world. This $5.9 million project will generate much-needed impact evaluations and cost-effectiveness analyses of health-related programs from the developing and transition world with an aim to accumulate a body of rigorous, empirical evidence that can inform the decisions of national policymakers and international donors.

For about two years, CGD's Evaluation Gap Working Group has been ruminating over the lack of rigorous impact evaluations for social development programs. The recommendations of the group have a lot in common with the new GDN call for proposals: to stimulate more and better impact evaluations, to promote quality standards, to enforce independence of evaluations, and to build evidence that policymakers and donors can utilize. The evidence on health accumulated by GDN's initiative will serve as a welcome complement to the broader base of impact evaluations of social development programs that a new impact evaluation council (further explained in this CGD brief) will produce.