Hi David, thanks making these points. I totally agree that there’s likely to be a lot of variation between campaigns, and that examining this is a critical step before making funding decisions- I don’t think (for instance) we should just fund mass media campaigns in general.
I did find it helpful to focus upon mass media campaigns (well, global health related mass media campaigns) as a whole to start with. This is because I think that there are methodological reasons to expect that the evidence for mass media will be somewhat weak (even if these interventions work) relative to the general standard of evidence that we tend to expect for global health interventions- namely, RCTs. This is because of problems in randomising, and of achieving sufficiently high power, for an RCT examining a mass media campaign. I think this factor is generally true of mass media campaigns (and perhaps not especially well-known), hence the fairly broad focus at the start of this report.
I agree with you though that ascertaining which programs tend to work is hugely important. I’ve pointed to a few factors (cultural relevance, media coverage etc), but this section is currently pretty introductory. The examples I’ve focused upon here are the ones where there is existing RCT evidence in LMICs (e.g. family planning is Glennerster et al., child survival from recognition of symptoms is Sarassat et al., HIV prevention is Banerjee et al.) Some things that stand out to me as being crucial (note that I’m focusing upon global health mass media campaigns in LMIC) include the communities at hand having the resources to successfully change their behavior, there being a current ‘information gap’ that people are motivated to learn about (e.g. the Sarassat one focuses on getting parents to recognise particular symptoms of diseases that could effect their children, and the Glennerster one provides info about the availability and usage of modern contraceptives), cultural relevance (i.e. through the design of the media) and media coverage.
Hi David, thanks making these points. I totally agree that there’s likely to be a lot of variation between campaigns, and that examining this is a critical step before making funding decisions- I don’t think (for instance) we should just fund mass media campaigns in general.
I did find it helpful to focus upon mass media campaigns (well, global health related mass media campaigns) as a whole to start with. This is because I think that there are methodological reasons to expect that the evidence for mass media will be somewhat weak (even if these interventions work) relative to the general standard of evidence that we tend to expect for global health interventions- namely, RCTs. This is because of problems in randomising, and of achieving sufficiently high power, for an RCT examining a mass media campaign. I think this factor is generally true of mass media campaigns (and perhaps not especially well-known), hence the fairly broad focus at the start of this report.
I agree with you though that ascertaining which programs tend to work is hugely important. I’ve pointed to a few factors (cultural relevance, media coverage etc), but this section is currently pretty introductory. The examples I’ve focused upon here are the ones where there is existing RCT evidence in LMICs (e.g. family planning is Glennerster et al., child survival from recognition of symptoms is Sarassat et al., HIV prevention is Banerjee et al.) Some things that stand out to me as being crucial (note that I’m focusing upon global health mass media campaigns in LMIC) include the communities at hand having the resources to successfully change their behavior, there being a current ‘information gap’ that people are motivated to learn about (e.g. the Sarassat one focuses on getting parents to recognise particular symptoms of diseases that could effect their children, and the Glennerster one provides info about the availability and usage of modern contraceptives), cultural relevance (i.e. through the design of the media) and media coverage.