How We’re Assisting Governments to Mitigate Impacts of COVID-19 Crisis- IPA

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A global group, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) says it is generating rigorous evidence, advising governments, and bringing together partners across the research-to-policy sector to rapidly provide decision-makers with rigorous data and evidence to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.

IPA is however, concerned with creating high quality evidence, and helping turn that evidence into better programmes and policies for the poor.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, IPA launched Research for Effective COVID-19 Responses, or RECOVR. 

It is acknowledging the Global Poverty Research Lab (GPRL) for their support and the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE) for their partnership in this effort.

RECOVR impact goals aim at equipping decision-makers in vulnerable contexts with timely data, evidence, and analysis to reduce COVID-19 transmission rates, improve social-safety net responses, build resilient and adaptable businesses and employment opportunities, keep children safe, healthy, and learning, improve women’s health, safety, and economic empowerment, build resilience and protect the financial health of families and individuals, and promote peace and safety, and improve humanitarian response

On its website, IPA says it has built a rapid response panel survey to directly inform key government partners on the health, economic, and social ramifications of the pandemic, and will be running it in eight countries to start.

The survey is meant to document real-time trends of policy concern and inform decision-makers about the communities that are hardest-hit by the pandemic. Learn more here.

The COVID-19 Economic Impact Surveys, a joint effort with the International Growth Centre, is measuring the economic impact of the crisis on a variety of agents, such as large companies, SMEs, informal and micro businesses, self-employed people, workers, and farmers in low- and middle-income countries. Learn more here.

‘’We are rapidly developing more than 80 new individual evaluations related to the COVID-19 response. Some build on existing studies to answer how existing programs under evaluation are impacting people’s ability to cope with the pandemic.

‘’Others are new studies that have been quickly developed to inform the design of new programmes aimed at mitigating the impacts of the crisis on health, livelihoods, learning, and other outcomes’’, IPA said.

Continuing, IPA says ‘’we are collaborating with peer organisations to centralise and share research, resources, and funding opportunities to inform global stakeholders and advocate for more funding to be allocated to economic responses, especially in the global south.

‘’Over the last five years, we have partnered with dozens of ministries in over 15 countries. Almost every partner we have (and new partnerships we have just formed) has urgent requests for data needs and evidence-informed advice.

‘’For example, with Y-RISECEGA, and researchers, we are advising the government’s social protection responses in Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. And we are supporting education system distance learning responses in Ghana, Peru, Rwanda, and Zambia.’’

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