Social science can\u2019t always save lives. But when it does, it can help\u00a0millions.<\/p>\n
Take India\u00a0for example: The country\u2019s estimated 2017 infant mortality rate is 47th worldwide \u2014\u00a0higher than Iraq\u2019s. In absolute terms, the numbers are staggering. At a time when the United Nations has set a goal of reducing child deaths by half, India accounted for a fifth of child deaths between the years of 2000 and 2015.<\/p>\n
During the latter half of that span, mortality rates actually declined. But researchers who set about trying to explain the drop, which would have seen 10 million more perish at the year 2000 rate, have uncovered a remarkable story.<\/p>\n
It goes back to 1998 when the Center for Global Health research began tracking the problem through what it termed its Million Death Study. Since 2001, India\u2019s Registrar General oversaw the use of its research methods in over a million homes spread across more than 7,000 different parts of the country.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where the social science comes in. The method involves utilizing 900 surveyors who conduct \u201cverbal autopsies\u201d of infant and child deaths in the home \u2014 deaths whose causes wouldn\u2019t otherwise be known.<\/p>\n
These innovative reports, stretching over several pages and conducted every six months, provided a standardized set of illness symptoms\u00a0and a family narrative of the child\u2019s death. Then, they went out \u2014 anonymously \u2014 to pairs of 400 total physicians. Each group of two reached a determination about the cause of death.<\/p>\n
What the\u00a0researchers found is that the 2005 tipping point in mortality rates correlated with a National Health Mission effort to ramp up surgical and medical care in rural areas, including vaccine administration and reproductive care.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s still massive room for improvement. The study\u2019s authors suggest that India\u2019s wealth, rapid development, and access to state-of-the-art medical infrastructure could have saved as many as 20 million additional lives. But the path forward has been revealed by the Center for Global Health\u2019s careful, thoughtful reliance on the intimate research verbal autopsies help provide.<\/p>\n
Share image via U.K. Department for International Development\/Flickr.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Social science can\u2019t always save lives. But when it does, it can help\u00a0millions. Take India\u00a0for example: The country\u2019s estimated 2017 infant mortality rate is 47th worldwide \u2014\u00a0higher than Iraq\u2019s. In absolute terms, the numbers are staggering. At a time when the United Nations has set a goal of reducing child deaths by half, India accounted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}