That seems a bit misleading since the IDinsight study, while excellent, is not actually the basis for QALY estimates as used in e.g. the Global Burden of Disease report. My understanding is that it informs the way givewell and open philanthropy trade off health vs income, but nothing more than that.
”While the rest of the global health community imposes its values on how trade-offs should be made, the most prominent global health organisation in EA actually surveys and asks what the recipients prefer.”
That’s also simply not true because EAs use off-the-shelf DALY/QALY estimates from other organizations all the time. And this is only about health vs income tradeoffs, not health measurement, which is what QALY/DALY estimates actually do.
Edit: as a concrete example, Open Phil’s South Asian air quality report takes its DALY estimates from the State of Global Air report, which is not based on any beneficiary surveys.
I’m not familiar with the Global Burden of Disease report, but if Open Phil and GiveWell are using it to inform health/income tradeoffs it seems like it would play a pretty big role in their grantmaking (since the bar for funding is set by being a certain multiple more effective than GiveDirectly!) [edit: also, I just realized that my comment above looked like I was saying “mostly yes” to the question of “is this true, as an empirical matter?” I agree this is misleading. I meant that Linch’s second sentence was mostly true; edited to reflect that.]
Again, it informs only how they trade off health and income. The main point of DALY/QALYs is to measure health effects. And in that regard, EA grantmakers use off-the-shelf estimates of QALYs rather than calculating them. Even if they were to calculate them, the IDinsight study does not have anything in it that would be used to calculate QALYs, it focuses solely on income vs health tradeoffs.
That seems a bit misleading since the IDinsight study, while excellent, is not actually the basis for QALY estimates as used in e.g. the Global Burden of Disease report. My understanding is that it informs the way givewell and open philanthropy trade off health vs income, but nothing more than that.
That puts EA in an even better light!
”While the rest of the global health community imposes its values on how trade-offs should be made, the most prominent global health organisation in EA actually surveys and asks what the recipients prefer.”
That’s also simply not true because EAs use off-the-shelf DALY/QALY estimates from other organizations all the time. And this is only about health vs income tradeoffs, not health measurement, which is what QALY/DALY estimates actually do.
Edit: as a concrete example, Open Phil’s South Asian air quality report takes its DALY estimates from the State of Global Air report, which is not based on any beneficiary surveys.
Yeah, you’re right.
I’m not familiar with the Global Burden of Disease report, but if Open Phil and GiveWell are using it to inform health/income tradeoffs it seems like it would play a pretty big role in their grantmaking (since the bar for funding is set by being a certain multiple more effective than GiveDirectly!) [edit: also, I just realized that my comment above looked like I was saying “mostly yes” to the question of “is this true, as an empirical matter?” I agree this is misleading. I meant that Linch’s second sentence was mostly true; edited to reflect that.]
Again, it informs only how they trade off health and income. The main point of DALY/QALYs is to measure health effects. And in that regard, EA grantmakers use off-the-shelf estimates of QALYs rather than calculating them. Even if they were to calculate them, the IDinsight study does not have anything in it that would be used to calculate QALYs, it focuses solely on income vs health tradeoffs.
Right, I’m just pointing out that the health/income tradeoff is a very important input that affects all of their funding recommendations.