J-PAL North America News: J-PAL North America enters a new stage of evidence building to alleviate poverty in close partnership with Arnold Ventures

This month, we are excited to announce a major investment by our long-time donor and partner, Arnold Ventures, that will enable J-PAL North America to improve lives at an even more significant scale by supporting rigorous research and advancing evidence-based policymaking. We are incredibly humbled by this generous funding, which will allow us to take our work to the next level.?

With this gift, we plan to continue expanding the evidence base on effective solutions to poverty, build the capacity and increase the diversity of our research network, institutionalize the use of evidence among our nonprofit and policymaker partners, and accelerate the rate and scale at which evidence influences policy. Since our founding in 2013, J-PAL North America has been on a mission to increase the usage and accessibility of randomized evaluations in answering pressing policy-relevant questions. This month’s newsletter highlights a few recent successes in achieving this mission.?

In a recent article in Route Fifty, J-PAL North America’s Government Partnerships Lead Louise Geraghty partners with Zachary Markovits at Results for America and Carrie Cihak at King County, Washington to urge state and local governments to invest American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding into rigorous evaluation. A feature on the Camden Coalition’s previous randomized evaluation demonstrates how null results can be used as an opportunity to learn and further innovate, highlighting lessons learned and strategies for other community-based organizations hoping to evaluate their programs.?

We also feature a new op-ed by J-PAL North America Co-Scientific Director Amy Finkelstein and former Connecticut Medicaid Director Gui Woolston on how Medicaid offices can use randomized evaluations to learn more about improving health and access to health care. We highlight new results of J-PAL supported studies on cash transfers to improve health outcomes in Chelsea, Massachusetts and interventions to encourage ongoing primary care among individuals who have recently given birth. Lastly, we feature one of our newest research resources from J-PAL’s Health Care Evaluation Toolkit, which provides guidance and advice for social scientists conducting randomized evaluations of health care delivery interventions, within health systems, or using health care data.?

We are deeply grateful to Arnold Ventures for this significant investment in J-PAL North America that will allow us to improve lives across the region at a much larger scale. Stay tuned for more news as we enter this exciting new phase of work.

Laura Feeney & Vincent Quan | Co-Executive Directors, J-PAL North America

Read more:

• A new gift from long-time donor and partner, Arnold Ventures, will allow J-PAL North America to scale existing efforts and explore new areas of work. Read the MIT news release for more ?
• In a new article, Gui Woolston, the former Connecticut Medicaid Director, and J-PAL North America Co-Scientific Director, Amy Finkelstein (MIT), call on Medicaid programs across the country to take advantage of opportunities to pursue test-and-learn approaches through randomized evaluations. Read more in Health Affairs Forefront ?
• A new study by Sumit Agrawal (Harvard), Benjamin Lê Cook (Harvard), and J-PAL affiliated professor Jeffrey Liebman (Harvard) evaluated the effect of cash transfers on health outcomes. Read more about the results ?

Media mentions:

Route Fifty: The time is now: Harnessing rigorous evaluation in a post-ARPA America

Generations: The Camden Coalition’s Randomized Controlled Trial Reexamined

Bloomberg: Sam Altman-Backed Group Completes Largest US Study on Basic Income