Simple and effective methods for helping people that nonprofits often ignore (with Kanika Bahl)
Apr 30, 2025
auto_awesome
Kanika Bahl, CEO of Evidence Action and former leader at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, delves into the overlooked yet effective solutions in nonprofit work. She discusses why nonprofits often bypass simple methods, emphasizing the importance of cost-effective health interventions like deworming programs. Bahl highlights the long-term economic impact of these initiatives and the complexities of behavioral change. The conversation also touches on the challenges of funding and the need for evidence-based approaches in philanthropy.
Chlorinating water is a simple yet critical intervention that can drastically reduce waterborne diseases and child mortality, highlighting the importance of advocacy for underfunded solutions.
Significant gaps in global health funding persist, particularly for issues like maternal syphilis, indicating a need to prioritize evidence-based interventions for pressing health crises.
Successful health initiatives must effectively engage community demand and integrate local voices into decision-making to address critical health needs and avoid underfunding.
Deep dives
Invisible Yet Essential: The Importance of Safe Water
Safe water is a crucial yet often overlooked intervention that has the potential to save millions of lives. Chlorinating water, for example, is a simple and cost-effective solution that can prevent child mortality by significantly reducing waterborne diseases. However, the invisibility of this intervention—people rarely consider whether their water is chlorinated—leads to underfunding and lack of prioritization by governments. Effective advocacy and awareness campaigns are needed to shift perceptions and ensure that safe water receives the attention and funding it deserves.
Bridging Gaps in Global Health: Overlooked Interventions
Certain health issues, like maternal syphilis, represent significant gaps in global health funding and attention. Despite causing thousands of stillbirths and complications, funding for syphilis testing and treatment remains minimal compared to conditions like HIV/AIDS, which receive far more financial support. Implementing a dual test that screens for both HIV and syphilis during prenatal visits represents a low-cost solution that could drastically reduce adverse outcomes. This disparity underscores the need for a shift towards prioritizing evidence-based interventions that address the most pressing health crises.
Demand and Supply: The Role of Political Will in Health Initiatives
The effectiveness of health interventions often hinges on the intersection between demand and political will. Programs can languish without community demand, despite their lifesaving potential, as seen with safe water initiatives that go underfunded due to lack of visibility. Conversely, initiatives driven by predefined donor strategies may miss critical needs that communities face, such as maternal health. Engaging local stakeholders to voice their health needs and integrating these voices into decision-making processes could lead to more effective and responsive health strategies.
Behavior Change: A Barrier to Successful Health Programs
Behavioral aspects play a crucial role in the success of health initiatives, as evidenced by the challenges faced in programs like safe water delivery. Interventions that require significant behavior change, such as educating communities on the benefits of chlorine dispensers, may experience high drop-off rates. Conversely, efforts that build on existing behaviors, like adding a syphilis test to routine prenatal screenings, demonstrate how minimal shifts can lead to substantial improvements. Understanding the nuances of behavior and tailoring interventions to minimize required changes is essential for achieving high impact in resource-constrained settings.
The High Cost of Neglect: Investing in Underappreciated Health Solutions
Investing in neglected health areas, such as anemia treatment and prevention, can yield significant long-term benefits, particularly in children. Interventions like providing iron supplements for anemic children have the potential to enhance cognitive development and economic productivity at a low cost. Despite the clear benefits, these interventions often struggle for funding, underlying a need for advocacy to better align resources with health priorities. The focus should shift towards interventions with proven high cost-effectiveness that can address pervasive health challenges and break cycles of poverty.
Why do nonprofits often ignore the simplest, most obvious solutions for helping the world? Why do some problems get a lot of attention while others — often of equal or greater importance — go completely unaddressed? Why is behavior change so hard? When should or shouldn't NGOs collaborate with governments? Why are deworming effects not as immediately noticeable as might be expected? What sorts of incentive structures surround charities? How can NGOs and nonprofits gain the financial flexibility necessary to make better strategic bets and more principled decisions? What's more important for drawing in donors: stories or statistics? How do (or should) nonprofits measure the long-term economic effects on individuals of their interventions? How can you support the organizations and interventions mentioned in this episode?
Kanika Bahl is CEO and President of Evidence Action where she has been on the Board since 2015. She is also a Trustee of Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust. Previously she served as Managing Director at Results for Development (R4D), where she established and led the Market Dynamics practice. The practice has increased access to products such as childhood pneumonia treatments and malaria bed nets for millions of individuals in Africa and Asia. Prior to R4D, Kanika served as an Executive Vice President at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) where she established greenfield operations in 17 African countries. She launched and led a $400M, 33-country public-private facility focused on driving access to new HIV/AIDS drugs and diagnostics. She received her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her BA in Mathematical Economics from Rice University. Find out more about the work of Evidence Action at evidenceaction.org, email them at info@evidenceaction.org, or connect with them on social media at @evidenceaction.
