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May 16, 2022

Evidence Gap Map to Assess the Effectiveness of Development Research

  • Public Policy/Strategic Management, Research Translation
  • Brief
The Research and Technical Assistance Center (RTAC) partnered with USAID’s Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub Research Division (ITR/R) to develop an Evidence Gap Map (EGM) to assess the effectiveness of development research in low and middle-income countries. Three evidence briefs summarize key learnings from the Evidence Gap Map and highlight recommendations for future ITR/R programming. The briefs are organized into the following themes: effective partnership approaches in international research capacity building for research translation, and research financing. The Pulte Institute for Global Development’s Evidence and Learning Division at Notre Dame has published further context on its website....read more

May 11, 2022

Toxic Arsenic in Drinking Water

  • Climate and Environmental Protection, Global Health
  • Factsheet
The fact sheet “Millions of People in India Consume Toxic Arsenic in Drinking Water” provides an a practical, sustainable, and profitable way to reduce arsenic in drinking water.  The fact sheet highlights ECAR technology, developed by Dr. Ashok Gadgil and a team of scientists in 2006, is a sustainable development solution that generates profitable local business while addressing inequities in access to drinking water....read more

April 4, 2022

Investing in Research to Accelerate Development Solutions

  • Research Translation
  • Factsheet
This fact sheet provides an overview of ITR/R’s role within the Agency and a summary of the large portfolio of ITR/R programs that advance the use of research, demonstrating that investments made in implementation research can yield impactful results....read more

December 29, 2021

Using Machine Learning for Programmatic Synthesis

  • Agriculture and Food Security
  • Brief, Report
In the summer of 2020, the Analysis and Learning Division (ALD) at the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security partnered with RTAC to test machine learning (ML) methods for aggregating and synthesizing information contained in water sector documents to inform approaches by the Center for Water (C4W) and achieve development objectives....read more

December 20, 2021

Early Childhood Care and Education Quality Assurance Systems in Africa

  • Education
  • Report
Research has consistently demonstrated the value of investing in quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for improved later learning outcomes of students. While countries throughout Africa have made significant progress in building their ECCE systems, there remains much room for improvement to ensuring quality of all ECCE facilities....read more

November 16, 2021

Impact of COVID-19 on Food Security

  • Agriculture and Food Security
  • Report
In barely two years, COVID-19 has set back progress in development efforts across the world and available data indicates there will likely be significant increases in extreme poverty, undernourishment, and child stunting in the coming years. But how will these effects persist, and what consequences will COVID-19 have for the future of food security? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UNoyvqLlDc Researchers at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, projected the pandemic’s effects to the year 2040 on economic growth, rising inequality, rising government debt, and education losses from school closures in 2020-2025, to explore their long-term impacts on extreme poverty, undernourishment, and child stunting.  Using the International Futures (IFs) model, which focuses on long-term analysis of economic and human development conditions for 186 countries, the team compared three scenarios:  A baseline COVID-19 Current Path scenario, which uses existing data and trends to project…...read more

November 8, 2021

Contact Tracing: Policy Solutions to Address Childhood Tuberculosis in the Northern Philippines

  • Global Health
  • Factsheet
Tuberculosis (TB) contact tracing among adult indexed cases is imperative for intensive case finding, especially among children 15 years old and younger who were exposed within three months prior to the adults’ detection and treatment, yet it is not uniformly conducted in the northern Philippines. To help understand and address the high burden of TB among exposed children, national and subnational governments need to establish guidance on contact tracing and provide health care workers with the resources and tools to improve the health of citizens. Through contact tracing, trained health care workers will be able to identify those who are eligible for either active TB or latent TB infection treatment following thorough screening and diagnosis....read more

October 18, 2021

Sustainable Finance for HIV

  • Global Health
  • Report
By Nigel Gibbs, Research Technical Assistance Center (RTAC). This study analyzes the effects of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s (PEPFAR) Sustainable Financing Initiative for HIV/AIDS (SFI). This program examined the efforts taken to save lives, prevent HIV infections, and accelerate progress toward controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 16 countries and the Caribbean and Asia regions, with a budget of nearly $48 million. SFI deployed technical expertise from around the world to design, test, and scale up new financing approaches. SFI helped countries improve the management of new and existing resources, leverage the unique advantages of the private sector, and expand health insurance benefits for people living with HIV. By pursuing these approaches, SFI enabled more people to receive affordable, convenient, and client-centered HIV services. SFI’s support has put countries on a more sustainable path toward an AIDS-free generation. Many countries made unprecedented increases to their budget allocations…...read more