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January 27, 2012 | 11:02 AM | By

Update: Humanitarian rankers don’t like getting ranked on

In case you haven’t been following the comment thread on my earlier post regarding the Top 100 NGOs as identified by Global Journal, I wanted to post here a critical look at the rankings by development professional Dave Algoso.

Dave Algoso

Algoso is an expert on aid and development issues. Here is his post Lies, Damned Lies and Ranking Lists: The Top 100 Best NGOs written in response to my earlier post about Global Journal:

Ranking lists are great publicity for both the rankers and the ranked but they usually involve bad analysis and mislead the readers…. Most of these NGOs are, to the best of my knowledge, quite good. My big disagreement is with GJ‘s ranking methodology. And the fact that they created this list at all.

Meanwhile, the equally well-intentioned folks at Geneva-based Global Journal have expressed, to me by email and in various comment threads, their disappointment at being ‘ranked on’ for publishing their list of the top non-governmental organizations working at making the world a better place.

The editor, Jean-Christophe Nothias, takes special umbrage at being criticized by lowly bloggers and even contends this may involve ‘libel.’ Says Nothias of their rankings:

It is a journalistic approach, not an academic, not a mathematical, one approach that understands a simple fact. Profit has a metric, money. How do you measure solidarity? How do you measure healing, suffering? Do you believe such a ranking has anything to do with the S&P, the NYSE and other financials index?

Right, so how did they do it? How did Global Journal arrive at placing Seattle-based PATH as 6th best NGO in the world — along with ranking a few other local organizations like Mercy Corps and Landesa — and inexplicably exclude other top NGOs like World Vision and the Gates Foundation?

The folks at Global Journal don’t want to go into the details. They appear to be arguing that they didn’t depend solely upon a quantitative methodology that can be checked by others for reliability. They also relied on their journalistic methodology, their own expert judgment, as Nothias says:

Do bloggers have a methodology? Do they make a difference between being a reporter and a rapporteur? Or is journalism, in their eyes, at the cemetery? We have an ethic and a strong belief in the fact that journalism is already part of the methodology.

As a journalist who is also apparently a blogger, I can say with great confidence that the ‘methodology’ and reliability of journalism is highly variable. Ranking, by its very nature, implies some kind of quantitative assessment that should be independent of even the best journalistic judgments.

As far as Algoso is concerned, Global Journal’s list is so arbitrary and subjective it is meaningless:

Ultimately, it sounds like the methodology was: we browsed the web, talked to a couple people, then sat around the conference table arguing among ourselves. Here’s the result. Sorry, guys, but that just doesn’t cut it. That’s not a methodology.

Well, so what? The folks at Global Journal are basically arguing that an imperfect listing is better than no listing.

Algoso disagrees. He notes that many organizations are already using the magazine’s ranking for promotional reasons — for fund-raising, that is. So there’s one obvious downside to Global Journal’s rankings. Should donors not give to World Vision because they aren’t on the list? Says Algoso:

As a development professional, I want to see a more efficient market for funding social causes. That’s an economics-y way of saying that I want funds to flow to those NGOs that can best convert them into positive social impact.

There is a great need to improving the evaluation of impact and effectiveness within the humanitarian, or NGO, community. It’s actually quite difficult to find consensus on the best metrics in this field. Many experts are struggling to come up with the most reliable measures of effectiveness.

In the meantime, people like Algoso think subjective short-cuts to rigorous evaluations may do more harm than good — if only by shifting funding away from those who actually are doing a better job toward organizations that happen to have won a media-sponsored lottery.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Global Journal, Landesa, Mercy Corps, PATH, World Vision
January 24, 2012 | 9:10 AM | By

PATH ranked world’s 6th best NGO; Gates Fdn doesn’t make top 100

Old Dominion University

All those magazine rankings out there — of the best hospitals, best doctors or best sushi bars — are popular but often highly suspect if not downright absurd due to organizations manipulating the evaluation process, weird and arbitrary criteria or just plain old sloppiness.

That said, Wikimedia Foundation has been ranked number one by Global Journal’s listing of the top 100 NGOs (non-governmental organizations).

Global Journal is a Geneva-based magazine aimed at becoming the insider’s guide to what it describes as the “global issues” scene. It also says at its (pricey) subscription site online that it is devoted to promoting “global governance.” Not sure that’s likely to sell too well in the U.S.

I do appreciate the Wikimedia Foundation, and its primary product Wikipedia. But is the online encyclopedia really more influential as a global issues player or doing more to make the world the better place than, say, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or World Vision?

Neither of these two local mega-NGOs made the Journal’s list. I asked Global Journal to explain this, but haven’t heard back yet. Still, a few other Seattle-based or Northwest organizations did make the grade.

PATH was ranked by Global Journal as the 6th best NGO in the world — preceded by Partners in Health, Oxfam, BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) and the International Rescue Committee. Other local organizations on the best 100 NGOs list included Mercy Corps and Landesa. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Journal, NGOs, PATH
December 16, 2011 | 1:13 PM | By

PATH acquires drug company to speed fight on neglected diseases

Seattle-based PATH announced today that it is acquiring the non-profit drug company OneWorld Health.

OneWorld Health, which will continue to operate from its headquarters in San Francisco, was created in 2000 as the first non-profit pharmaceutical company and has been focused from the beginning on creating drugs and vaccines for use in poor countries.

“I don’t think we could have considered trying to partner with a for-profit drug company,” said Hugh Chang, head of special projects at PATH who will act as interim chief of drug development for the PATH-OneWorld Health merger. “That would have been a misalignment in terms of our missions.”

PATH, launched in the late 1970s in Seattle initially focused on women’s health issues, has grown into one of the largest players in the global health arena — due largely to its key role administering and carrying out many well-funded projects sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Known for its talent at bringing together public and private partners in innovative ways to solve health problems in poor countries, this is the first time PATH will have a direct role in developing drugs.

In the past, PATH has had to spend a lot of time and effort working to convince drug makers to join in the fight against neglected diseases. Now it is a drug maker. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, diarrhea, leischmaniasis, malaria, neglected diseases, OneWorld Health, PATH
November 28, 2011 | 11:30 AM | By

Seattle Times on PATH’s work with women in Nicaragua

Flickr, cromacom

Women's rights were a big issue in the Nicaraguan civil war

One of the best ways to fight poverty and inequity is to improve the lives of women and girls, largely because this translates into healthier children and, eventually, wealthier and more stable communities overall.

The Seattle Times‘ Kristi Heim, with photographer Erika Schultz, did a nice job describing a fairly comprehensive and innovative effort by PATH working to improve the lives of Nicaraguan women. When the Sandinistas took control of the country in 1979, many of the leaders said women’s empowerment would be a critical part of the reform planned by the revolutionary government.

Those plans didn’t translate into much meaningful change in this machismo country, as it turned out. In an article for the newspaper’s Pacific Northwest magazine, Heim describes the challenge:

Adolescent pregnancy rates are also high — some of the highest outside Africa. And on average, rural women here have more pregnancies than women in developed countries, making their risk of dying in pregnancy or childbirth over the course of their lives seven times greater than it is in the United States. And in rural Nicaragua, where husbands are typically in charge of family decisions, women generally don’t have the choice or the ability to plan when to start having a family or when to stop.

The story focuses to a great extent on PATH’s Nicaragua director Margarita Quintanilla, a woman I met many years ago when I wrote for the Seattle PI about one of their innovative strategies for reaching out to girls and young women with messages of empowerment — soap operas.

As Heim notes, the PATH program has grown in both breadth and scope since then, thanks to funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and partnering with other organizations working in Nicaragua.

Seatte-based Global Partnerships, for example, has been working in Nicaragua for many years providing micro-loans to women. Now, they are partnering with PATH through an organization called Pro Mujer to coordinate the microfinance initiative with programs aimed at providing women with better access to health services, especially emphasizing cervical cancer prevention.

 

FILED UNDER: Health, Global Partnerships, Nicaragua, PATH
October 31, 2011 | 11:08 AM | By

PATH chief to leave, will head to Gates Foundation

Chris Elias

Chris Elias, head of Seattle-based PATH, announced today that he is leaving, after a decade, to take over as head of the global development program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The news release includes these generic quotes:

“Chris brings great experience in managing complex programs on the ground, around the world,” said Jeff Raikes, CEO of the foundation. “He will help us expand the depth of our expertise from research and development through to delivery of the tools needed to give the poorest people the chance to live healthy and productive lives. I’m excited to work with Chris to strengthen our partnerships and maximize our impact.”

“I am deeply honored to be joining the Gates Foundation,” said Elias. “I look forward to applying my experience in health and development to help advance the foundation’s ambitious mission.”

Here is Elias’ letter to PATH staff:

I am writing with some important news about PATH and our leadership team.

Before I joined PATH in 2000, I knew it to be a highly effective global health organization. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chris Elias, PATH
October 28, 2011 | 12:08 PM | By

Experts question Gates-Glaxo malaria vaccine report

Flickr, Aya Rosen

Many of the world’s leading vaccine experts and the prestigious British journal Nature are raising questions about the potential efficacy of an experimental malaria vaccine — and the way it is being promoted by scientists supported by the Gates Foundation.

As Nature News’ Declan Butler reports in Malaria vaccine results raise scrutiny:

To judge from last week’s headlines, scientists had made a big breakthrough in the long campaign to create a malaria vaccine ….

Yet several leading vaccine researchers, who are critical of the unusual decision to publish partial trial data, argue that the results raise questions about whether the RTS,S candidate vaccine can actually win approval.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, malaria, PATH, vaccine
October 25, 2011 | 12:03 PM | By

Three reasons not to get too excited about the Gates-Glaxo malaria vaccine

Last week, the biggest news out of the Gates Foundation’s Malaria Forum were some interim results of an ongoing test of an experimental malaria vaccine.

Many, if not most, media reported the findings in somewhat hyperbolic fashion as a “major milestone,” a “breakthrough” or “world’s first malaria vaccine.”

Google News on the malaria vaccine

Despite the hype and fanfare, many experts at the Seattle meeting said this experimental vaccine (known as RTS,S) actually so far represents only incremental progress — a scientific achievement which may still turn out to have little practical utility in the real world. They usually only said so privately, given that the Gates Foundation preferred to hear “optimistic” assessments rather than cranky ones.

1. No breakthrough. Let’s first put to bed the claims that these findings represent a major milestone. In fact, the findings largely repeat earlier ‘interim’ results that have continued to find the vaccine protects only half of those immunized — and appears to wane fairly rapidly over time.

So that’s the first reason — a point also made in this (terribly titled) Huffington Post article A vaccine that works only half the time is not the shot in the arm malaria needs. The author, Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of Médecins Sans Frontières‘ essential medicines campaign says:

But while the latest advance toward the development is scientifically important, there are several reasons to be cautious about the difference this vaccine could make, on the basis of current results.

2. The cost question. The second reason this halfway effective malaria vaccine may not work is cost. The manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline has refused to say what it thinks it will have to charge for the vaccine, other than to say it would be “at cost” plus 5 percent. Neither the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which is working with GSK on the malaria vaccine trial, or the Gates Foundation (which funds the PATH initiative) will say what price they think is feasible. Many say anything over a dollar might be too much for poor countries.

3. The science. It is promising that researchers have shown a vaccine against malaria is possible. But there’s a lot of other research out there indicating why it may be quite difficult to get a malaria vaccine that can perform as well as most of us expect a vaccine to perform — providing ideally something like 90 percent protection but hopefully not lower than 70 percent. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, malaria, Medicins Sans Frontieres, PATH, vaccine
October 18, 2011 | 9:00 AM | By

Queen of England bestows honor on PATH’s gizmo guy

Flickr, UK Ministry of Defence

Queen Elizabeth

The Queen of England has bestowed an exalted honor on PATH’s top gizmo guy.

“She said global health was a rather big subject and must involve a lot of travel,” said Michael Free, chief of technology for PATH, who had in fact stopped off in London to be received by the Queen before embarking on a month-long trip of global health travel.

Last week, Free was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his team’s many inventions and innovative approaches aimed at helping solve health problems in the developing world. It’s not quite as prestigious as a Knighthood but better than a sharp poke in the helmet.

PATH

Michael Free

One of Free’s inventions was the single-use, auto-disabling syringe — a device now in common use worldwide, here in the U.S. as well, aimed at reducing the transmission of disease through accidental needle sticks.

But Free was also likely honored for his much broader and critical role in helping give birth to PATH in the 1970s.

How this British farm boy, raised in creamy Devonshire, ended up in Seattle working on some of the most innovative solutions to developing world health problems offers insight into the evolution of PATH and, to some extent, the entire field of global health.

“In the beginning, our approach was not well-received by either the public or private sectors,” said Free. “It was a bit out-of-the-box.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Battelle, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, condoms, family planning, GAVI, Michael Free, PATH, Queen Elizabeth, vaccines