May 20 2011
"[F]inally, we're getting some reliable data suggesting how to" help people in developing countries because of economists, who "provide answers that are rigorously field-tested, akin to the way drugs are tested in randomized controlled trials, yielding results that are particularly credible and persuasive," Nicholas Kristof writes in his New York Times column.
Kristof gives two examples of programs that produced measurable results: deworming African children "resulted in 25 percent less absenteeism" in school and warning Kenyan teenager girls against having sex with older men helped protect them from HIV (5/18).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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