Global Health and Development Meetup – Kat on policy diagnostics

Get together with others based in the DC area interested in applying Effective Altruism ideas to global health and development. This is part of a monthly series of gatherings. All our welcome – no background or experience required.

This month, Kat will give a 30-minute talk on “policy diagnostics” for boosting economic growth and strengthening health systems (description below). A short Q&A and open discussion will follow. There will also be snacks!

Talk description

EA-aligned initiatives have been focusing more and more on influencing government policy. Sometimes, the “right” policy choices might be different from one country to another. Global development practitioners work in many countries with the same big-picture objectives – improving health, well-being, prosperity – but different challenges and advantages. They have tools for analyzing how the specific situation in a country affects the top priorities for policy changes or for investment, by trying to locate the biggest barriers to better outcomes. To begin, this session will give a whirlwind intro to three widely-used conceptual frameworks for this kind of “policy diagnostics” in health systems strengthening and economic growth promotion.

Those frameworks are different in some ways–the second part of the session will describe those differences and put forward several hypotheses about why they differ. Different policy domains–health vs economic growth–are themselves different, and they may call for different kinds of analytical tools. Hopefully these considerations will be thought-provoking and useful for doing policy analysis in other cause areas and other areas of global development as well.

Please email Kat at katriel.friedman@gmail.com if have suggestions for future sessions, or anything else.