Executive summary: SoGive estimates that StrongMinds, a charity providing group psychotherapy in Africa, treats depression for $72.94 per person, after making subjective adjustments for partner contributions and expansion costs. Restricted funding focused on low-income countries may increase cost-effectiveness.
Key points:
StrongMinds has an unusually strong monitoring and evaluation program for a mental health NGO, tracking before-and-after results and cost-effectiveness.
SoGive attributes 17% of impact to StrongMinds’ partners, adjusting the cost per person treated from $64 to $72.94. This estimate involves many subjective judgment calls.
Restricting funding to low-income countries like Uganda and Zambia may increase cost-effectiveness to $62.56 per person, but this is uncertain.
StrongMinds’ internal M&E data is likely biased and inflated compared to the true effect, but is still useful for basic monitoring. Effect sizes should be estimated from academic studies.
StrongMinds has a good track record of increasing cost-effectiveness over time. Costs may continue to decline by around 14% per year.
SoGive favors relying on broad, high-quality meta-analyses rather than individual studies to estimate the true effect size of StrongMinds’ intervention.
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Executive summary: SoGive estimates that StrongMinds, a charity providing group psychotherapy in Africa, treats depression for $72.94 per person, after making subjective adjustments for partner contributions and expansion costs. Restricted funding focused on low-income countries may increase cost-effectiveness.
Key points:
StrongMinds has an unusually strong monitoring and evaluation program for a mental health NGO, tracking before-and-after results and cost-effectiveness.
SoGive attributes 17% of impact to StrongMinds’ partners, adjusting the cost per person treated from $64 to $72.94. This estimate involves many subjective judgment calls.
Restricting funding to low-income countries like Uganda and Zambia may increase cost-effectiveness to $62.56 per person, but this is uncertain.
StrongMinds’ internal M&E data is likely biased and inflated compared to the true effect, but is still useful for basic monitoring. Effect sizes should be estimated from academic studies.
StrongMinds has a good track record of increasing cost-effectiveness over time. Costs may continue to decline by around 14% per year.
SoGive favors relying on broad, high-quality meta-analyses rather than individual studies to estimate the true effect size of StrongMinds’ intervention.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.