Annette Brown

Designation: Former director, 3ie

Blogs by author

Seven impact evaluations on demand creation for VMMC: how a focused thematic window can meet multiple evidence needs

On World AIDS Day 2015, we are marking the culmination of 3ie’s third thematic window, which funded seven pilot programmes and rapid impact evaluations looking for ways to increase the demand for voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC). In late 2013, we awarded grants to project teams of implementers and researchers to pilot innovative programs for increasing VMMC demand and to conduct rapid impact evaluations of those programmes.

How to peer review replication research

“The 3ie replication process differs in important ways from the standard research community-led peer-review process in academic journals. We have been explicitly instructed by 3ie staff not to discuss our experiences with the replication process at any length in this note, including our views on the weaknesses of their current system and the review standards they employ.

Demand creation for voluntary medical male circumcision: how can we influence emotional choices?

This year in anticipation of World AIDS Day, UNAIDS is focusing more attention on reducing new infections as opposed to treatment expansion. As explained by Center for Global Development’s Mead Over in his blog post, reducing new infections is crucial for easing the strain on government budgets for treatment as well as for eventually reaching “the AIDS transition” when the total number of people living with HIV begins to decline.

When is an error not an error?

Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin (HAP) in their now famous replication study of Reinhart and Rogoff’s (R&R) seminal article on public debt and economic growth use the word “error” 45 times. At 3ie, we are more than a year into our replication programme, and we are seeing a similar propensity for replication researchers to use the word “error” (or “mistake” or “wrong”) and for this language to cause contentious discussions between the original authors and replication researchers.

The HIV/AIDS treatment cascade

One of the reasons we appreciate international days is that they prompt us to pause and reflect on what we’ve been doing in the past year, as well as think about what the next year will bring.  On this International AIDS Day, our first reflection is realising how much we have grown our HIV/AIDS programming in 3ie in 2013.