By: Alanna Shaikh
Lately I’ve been thinking about failure. Specifically, global health program failures. The health programs that don’t do anything, or don’t do what they’re supposed to. I’ve always thought of that kind of failure to be embarrassing – shameful, even. But maybe I’ve been thinking about it all wrong.
There are a lot of kinds of program failure. There is failure that happened because of badly designed programs, for one. They’re not tailored to the community it works with, they’re not based on actual evidence, or they don’t have the time or money to actually achieve their objectives. And those failures really are embarrassing. This walking group proposed for Somali refugees in Australia seems like a good example of that kind of failure.
But then there are the more inexplicable program failures. Good-looking projects, based on good research, with plenty of community input into their design. And they just don’t work. Some factor comes up that no one took into account and people don’t react the way they have reacted in the past. All the research and planning in the world can’t account for every single possibility. (Even, it turns out, with Somali refugees and walking groups. This research among Somali refugees in New Zealand implies that women there like walking groups.)
» Read more: Setbacks in Public Health — When a program doesn’t work
