Independent public health evaluations could save lives

New child survival programs must engage evaluation teams from the start to identify the major causes of child mortality in intervention areas and to ensure that appropriate resources are available to scale up coverage and treatment, according to a retrospective evaluation led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study -- the first in a series of articles to focus on evidence from large-scale evaluations -will appear in the January 16 issue of the Lancet and is now available online. The new recommendations will help governments and donor agencies invest new funding to avert childhood deaths and reach the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.