While it’s just a search methodology and we haven’t had the chance to brainstorm thoroughly with it. However, off the top of my, here are some potential interventions that have benefits across multiple cause areas: (a) general vaccine immunization reminders, of course, since they increase uptake of multiple vaccines and help combat multiple diseases; (b) front-of-pack labelling, which tends to have positive impact on consumption of salt (and hence the hypertension burden), sugar (and hence the diabetes burden) and general calories (and hence the obesity burden); and (c) resilient food systems (which potentially helps both in normal famines, plus more extreme nuclear winter/abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios).
Maybe I misunderstood something but my understanding was that there was an entry that you rewarded related to significant overall impact given the benefits across multiple cause areas. So I was wondering if this is something you could share.
Yep, that’s what Jeroen submitted, and he posted it to the forum after. I think it’s a really useful perspective to have. In GHD, we already have various risk factors that we can address to solve multiple diseases (e.g. hypertension for coronary heart disease, stroke, kidney disease etc), and it makes sense to apply this perspective more broadly.
I don’t want to take up your time so feel free to not reply, just wondering out loud how Jeroen’s method compares to the systematic cause mapping approach Michael Plant suggested in his thesis for generating new promising causes. I suppose the latter can be interpreted as a systematic way to implement Jeroen’s method; for instance, starting from this table in Plant’s thesis generating happiness intervention ideas…
...Plant notes that many solutions apply to several primary causes (rows), inviting the idea of solution clustering (as illustrated below). I suppose Jeroen’s “increasing cycling rates in cities instead of car usage” example would be what Plant calls a secondary cause, or whatever is more granular than secondary cause. Your longlist of causes seems relevant here too.
(Aside: I’m not quite a fan of the ‘primary vs secondary cause’ naming, since the shared ‘cause’ name makes me think they’re the same kind of thing when they’re not – primary causes are problems, while secondary causes are solutions. ‘Intervention area / cluster’ would’ve been more illuminating I think.)
I don’t think I read that part of Michael’s thesis before, but it does look interesting!
In general, I think it’s fairly arbitrary what a cause is—an intervention/solution can also be reframed as a problem (and hence a cause) through negation (e.g. physical activity is a preventative solution to various diseases like cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and in a real sense physical inactivity is a problem; having an ALLFED-style resilient food supply is a mitigatory solution to nuclear winter—even if we can’t prevent nuclear exchange, we can perhaps stop billions from dying from famine—and in that sense lack of foods capable of growing in abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios is a problem).
Where can I find “significant overall impact given the benefits across multiple cause areas”?
Hi Sebastian,
While it’s just a search methodology and we haven’t had the chance to brainstorm thoroughly with it. However, off the top of my, here are some potential interventions that have benefits across multiple cause areas: (a) general vaccine immunization reminders, of course, since they increase uptake of multiple vaccines and help combat multiple diseases; (b) front-of-pack labelling, which tends to have positive impact on consumption of salt (and hence the hypertension burden), sugar (and hence the diabetes burden) and general calories (and hence the obesity burden); and (c) resilient food systems (which potentially helps both in normal famines, plus more extreme nuclear winter/abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios).
Maybe I misunderstood something but my understanding was that there was an entry that you rewarded related to significant overall impact given the benefits across multiple cause areas. So I was wondering if this is something you could share.
Ah, no—basically the award was for a method of searching for impactful causes.
Ok, I feel a bit confused as to why a method wouldn’t have a more substantial entry or description but also don’t want to keep bothering you.
Maybe you were referencing this?
Yep, that’s what Jeroen submitted, and he posted it to the forum after. I think it’s a really useful perspective to have. In GHD, we already have various risk factors that we can address to solve multiple diseases (e.g. hypertension for coronary heart disease, stroke, kidney disease etc), and it makes sense to apply this perspective more broadly.
Thanks Joel, I think I agree.
I don’t want to take up your time so feel free to not reply, just wondering out loud how Jeroen’s method compares to the systematic cause mapping approach Michael Plant suggested in his thesis for generating new promising causes. I suppose the latter can be interpreted as a systematic way to implement Jeroen’s method; for instance, starting from this table in Plant’s thesis generating happiness intervention ideas…
...Plant notes that many solutions apply to several primary causes (rows), inviting the idea of solution clustering (as illustrated below). I suppose Jeroen’s “increasing cycling rates in cities instead of car usage” example would be what Plant calls a secondary cause, or whatever is more granular than secondary cause. Your longlist of causes seems relevant here too.
(Aside: I’m not quite a fan of the ‘primary vs secondary cause’ naming, since the shared ‘cause’ name makes me think they’re the same kind of thing when they’re not – primary causes are problems, while secondary causes are solutions. ‘Intervention area / cluster’ would’ve been more illuminating I think.)
Hi Mo,
I don’t think I read that part of Michael’s thesis before, but it does look interesting!
In general, I think it’s fairly arbitrary what a cause is—an intervention/solution can also be reframed as a problem (and hence a cause) through negation (e.g. physical activity is a preventative solution to various diseases like cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and in a real sense physical inactivity is a problem; having an ALLFED-style resilient food supply is a mitigatory solution to nuclear winter—even if we can’t prevent nuclear exchange, we can perhaps stop billions from dying from famine—and in that sense lack of foods capable of growing in abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios is a problem).