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News, ideas, and analysis from J-PAL staff and affiliated professors. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly email updates.

Two envelopes; one with the Minnesota Management and Budget Logo and text "400 Centennial Office Building 658 Cedar Street Saint Paul, Minnesota 55155." The other with the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy Logo and text "Prescription Monit 2828 University Av Minneapolis, MN 5 http://pmp.pharm Supporting Patien. Dr. Prescriber PMP Letter 111 Main St Anvtown. MN 55555"

Building research partnerships to address the opioid crisis in Minnesota, part two

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Mireille Jacobson (University of Southern California), Weston Merrick (Minnesota Management and Budget or MMB), and Adam Sacarny (Columbia University) sit down with J-PAL staff to discuss the results of their randomized evaluation assessing how various letters affected physicians’ use of Minnesota’s...
Speakers sit on a stage

India’s nutrition landscape and the path forward

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Over the last few years, India has made sizable investments in improving child nutrition through government programs like the Poshan Abhiyaan, the Government of India’s flagship scheme to tackle malnutrition in children, and the ongoing work of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), the...
A child plays in a yard in Botswana

A state-of-the-art, cheap, scalable method to measure child and adult (multilingual) speech in early childhood interventions

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  • Alessandra Cassar
  • Diana Contreras Suárez
  • Alejandrina Cristia
  • Pauline Grosjean
  • Sarah Walker
We describe a state-of-the-art, cheap, easily scalable method, relying on inexpensive hardware together with open-source technology to measure speech. We describe how the hardware is better suited than alternatives to field settings and large-scale interventions, and how the software is more precise...
A roadside billboard that reads "stay home, limit travel, save lives"

Encouraging adherence to preventive health guidelines during a pandemic: Lessons from rigorous Covid-19 evidence

This note provides an overview of the evidence from randomized evaluations that has come out during the Covid-19 pandemic thus far to combat these barriers. These general lessons on increasing uptake of healthy behaviors and improving the delivery of health products and services may be of value in...
Doctor checks baby's heartbeat, held by mother.

Promoting rigorous, actionable research in maternal and newborn health in the United States

Affiliated researchers Jessica Cohen and Maggie McConnell and our Health Care Delivery Initiative staff highlight the importance of randomized evaluations in maternal and newborn health and discuss future research generation in collaboration with social scientists, clinicians, and policy-makers.
Mother holding baby

How government, academic, and nonprofit partners are working to evaluate a home visiting program in South Carolina to improve family health and wellbeing

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Jordan Desai (South Carolina Department of Health Human Services) ; William Thorland, (National Service Office for Nurse-Family Partnership and Child First); and Margaret McConnell (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) discuss the rigorous evaluation of the Nurse-Family Partnership program in...
A man points to code on a desktop computer with two women

Newly published data on health care hotspotting study underscores the importance of research transparency

The team behind the evaluation on health care hotspotting describes why they prioritized publishing replication data and lessons learned from the process.
Four panelists sit in front of a screen, while one person presents

Promoting healthy behaviors and family planning in Egypt: A recap from the Global Evidence for Egypt Spotlight Seminar

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J-PAL MENA at AUC co-hosted a seminar with UNICEF Egypt on February 22, 2022 to share global evidence on fertility and family planning to promote healthy behaviors and curb population growth in Egypt. This seminar was the fifth in a broader Global Evidence for Egypt Spotlight Seminar Series.