Values in Health Policy Katherine Furman University College Cork

Three overlapping areas of literature Values in Science Values in Evaluation RCTs and Context

Values and Evaluation “Putting the values back into evaluation”. “All evaluations are value judgments” (e.g. Swedish school evaluations (Segerholm, 2011)). Increasingly pressing in international aid evaluations.

RCTs, Policy Interventions and Context How do we get from ‘there’ to ‘here’? (Cartwright and Hardie) One thing we need to pay attention to is ‘context’. Infrastructural context (e.g. International AIDS interventions (Seckinelgin, 2017)). Value context (e.g. West African Ebola outbreak).

Background to the Ebola Case 2013-2016; Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia. Conservative estimate: 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths (WHO) Large scale intervention and large scale resistance.

The Case of Guinea 4 April 2014: MSF Ebola treatment centre opened, attacked one week later. June – July 2014: 26 villages barricade themselves. August 2014: Attack on health centre in Koyama. August 2014: Nzerekore city riot (22 injured). 16 September 2014: 8 murdered in Womey. June – December: Red Cross report an average of 10 attacks per month.

What happened in Guinea? James Fairhead (2016): There was a breakdown of pre-existing accommodations, many of which were value-based. 1. Hospitals. 2. Mortuary practices.

Two ways not to deal with values Exoticization. Suppression of Value difference.