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Guide to interpreting this cost-effectiveness analysis
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Sheet descriptions
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Main CEA
This sheet contains the primary calculations that result in final cost-effectiveness estimates. This sheet draws on inputs from the "Inputs" sheet and inputs calculated in the other supplemental sheets listed below.
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Counterfactual malaria
This sheet contains our calculations of how high malaria mortality and prevalence rates would be in the absence of SMC campaigns.
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Leverage/Funging
This sheet contains our calculations of the impact that crowding in and crowding out funding by other contributors has on the benefits of the program.
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Inputs
This sheet contains all of the manually entered input values informing the CEA, along with the sources and reasoning supporting them. This sheet also contains inputs sourced from the "GBD estimates" sheet.
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GBD estimates
This sheet contains disease burden and population datasets downloaded from the Institute of Health Metrics (IHME)'s Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project.
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Simple CEA
This sheet contains a simplified version of the CEA that is designed to be comparable to our CEAs of other programs.
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Sensitivity analysis
This sheet contains the outputs of a sensitivity analysis macro that tests the cost-effectiveness ranges that would result from updating certain inputs to their 25th or 75th percentile values.
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Terminology key
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Terms specific to this CEA
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SMC seasonThe part of the year when SMC is delivered because malaria transmission is highest. In locations where GiveWell currently supports SMC, this is either four or five months each year.
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SMC cycleRefers to a monthly SMC treatment cycle, which consists of a three-day treatment regimen of SMC medication that provides protection from malaria for one month.
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SMC roundRefers to a year's worth of SMC cycles, which are typically delievered over a period of four to five consecutive months during the rainy season.
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SahelA subregion of Africa where malaria transmission tends to be highly seasonal. Historically, SMC was only delivered at large scale within the Sahel. Since 2020-21, SMC is now being piloted in locations outside the Sahel.
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Malaria-attributable mortalityDeaths that could be averted by SMC, either directly (because they are malaria deaths) or indirectly (because malaria indirectly increases the risk of death from other causes).
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Indirect malaria deaths
Deaths in which malaria plays a causal role, but are attributed to another cause. For example, malaria may increase the likelihood of death from malnutrition or other infectious diseases. Malaria control interventions often have a larger effect on all-cause mortality than would be expected exclusively from declines in malaria-specific mortality, which we interpret as evidence that averting malaria may also avert deaths attributed to other causes.
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Terms used across GiveWell's CEAs
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Internal validityDescribes an adjustment we make to the treatment effect of an intervention to account for the possibility that the treatment effects found in studies may not represent the true effect the intervention had on the populations studied.
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External validityDescribes an adjustment we make to the treatment effect of an intervention to account for differences in the program implementation or populations treated in studies from the program implementation or populations treated by grantee programs.
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LeverageDescribes a situation where a grantee's spending on a program causes other organizations or governments to contribute more to the program than they otherwise would have. In most cases, accounting for leverage increases cost-effectiveness
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FungingDescribes a situation where a grantee's spending on a program causes other organizations or governments to contribute less to the program than they otherwise would have. In most cases, accounting for funging decreases cost-effectiveness.
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CounterfactualIn most cases, describes the state of the world that would exist if we did not provide funding to a grantee for a program. When discussing the "counterfactual value of other actors' spending," we are referring to how much benefit another organization's or government's spending would generate if it were spent on something other than the grantee program.
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Moral weightsTo compare cost-effectiveness across different programs, we use ‘moral weights’ to quantify the benefits of different program impacts (e.g. increased income vs reduced deaths). We benchmark the value of each benefit to a value of 1, which we define as the value of doubling someone’s consumption for one year.
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Philanthropic actorsNon-governmental organizations (NGOs) providing funding to philanthropic programs.
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Unit and source key
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Unit labels used in the CEA
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#Number
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per 1kRate per 1,000
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per 100k
Rate per 100,000
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$U.S. dollars
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ln($)
The natural logarithm of a monetary value
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%Percentage
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ppt
Percentage points
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UoV
Units of value: an arbitrary unit GiveWell uses to compare the moral value of different types of outcomes, such as saving lives or increasing income
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xcash
Cost-effectiveness in terms of multiples of GiveDirectly's unconditional cash transfer program
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Source labels used in the CEA
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input
A value pulled from the "Inputs" sheet
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calc
A value calculated using other values in the same sheet
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supp
A value pulled from one of the sheets hosting supplemental calculations
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main
A value pulled fom the "Main CEA" sheet
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feed
A value pulled from an earlier section within the same sheet
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GiveWell analyses informing this model
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Analyses specific to this CEA
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GW's analysis of Malaria Consortium's cost per SMC cycle administered
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GW's analysis of the number of SMC cycles delivered per year
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GW's analysis of the indirect effects of Malaria Consortium's SMC programs relative to Cisse et al. 2016
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GW's analysis of SMC coverage in trials
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GW's analysis of malaria income effect size
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GW's analysis of subnational mortality rates for SMC
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GW's analysis of leverage and funging risk for SMC
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Analyses referenced across GiveWell's CEAs
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GW's moral weights and discount rate
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GW's analysis on estimating multiplier for benefits experienced by other household members
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GW's supplemental intervention-level adjustments
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GiveWell's CEA for GiveDirectly's unconditional cash transfers
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GW's analysis of the counterfactual value of other actors' spending
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GW's analysis of the counterfactual value of Global Fund spending
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