Successful Strategies

Successful StrategiesPublic health programs have scored a handful of victories in developing nations. By Bob GrantImplementing Change Video: First-responders to HIV in Haiti reminisce Slideshow: Implementing change in Haiti Science Applied to the Greatest NeedsThough it's tough to pinpoint specific causes of success or failure in widespread interventions, all of these programs incorporated some degree of outcome evaluation, or implementation science. That doesn'

Written byBob Grant

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By Bob Grant

Implementing Change

Video: First-responders to HIV in Haiti reminisce

Slideshow: Implementing change in Haiti

Science Applied to the Greatest Needs

Though it's tough to pinpoint specific causes of success or failure in widespread interventions, all of these programs incorporated some degree of outcome evaluation, or implementation science. That doesn't mean that rigorous evaluation is common among global public health programs, warns Ruth Levine, co-chair of the Center for Global Development's Evaluation Gap Working Group. "Those really are exceptions to the rule," says Levine, a health economist and author of Case Studies in Global Health: Millions Saved, a book that highlights the success of the following programs (Jones and Bartlett, 2007). "All of them were nimble in terms of being responsive when new information that suggested a change in strategy was needed."

Intervention: In 1985, The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) launched a program to extend polio immunization ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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