Policy Influence

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Policy Influence

Our goal is that evidence is used to improve the lives of people living in poverty.

Initiative Section Body

IPA’s strategy is to ensure that high-quality evidence does not stay on the shelf, but instead gets into the hands of those who need it, when they need it, as we support decision-makers to create better programs and policies that improve lives.

At its core, our policy influence strategy is driven by policymakers’ most pressing questions. We use a toolkit that goes beyond impact evaluations, putting local researchers and decision-makers at the center. We invest in localized data and evidence capacity to sustain learning.

The central goal of this work is to solve the last-mile problem of ensuring that decision-makers are equipped with evidence to implement effective programs and policies that reduce poverty and improve lives.


Tools

Repeater Teasers

Co-creation

IPA proactively creates opportunities for researchers and decision-makers to jointly identify, test, and evaluate solutions to pressing problems to ensure that evidence is used to improve lives.

Policy Checklists

Projects have a policy minimum must-do checklist designed to make research more accessible and helpful to decision-makers and keep partners invested through the project and beyond.

Impact Focus

IPA pursues high-impact policy opportunities that meet four criteria: an existing body of research, an opportunity to influence important decisions, existing relationships, and existing funding for implementation.

Embedded Labs

IPA works with government partners to establish Embedded Evidence Labs: teams that work within governments to institutionalize the use of data and evidence to deliver more effective programs and policies at the national level.

Policy & Scale Plans

With IPA's facilitation, researchers and decision-makers come together to craft pre-policy plans and path-to-scale plans, providing a roadmap for action based on research results.

Policy Inputs

To support national-level policy development and program design in the places where we work, IPA synthesizes relevant evidence in clear terms and shares actionable lessons and insights with policymakers.

Evidence-to-Policy Groups

IPA gathers locally-based researchers, decision-makers, and partners through research coordinating groups and project-level steering committees to develop policy-driven research agendas and to use results to inform policy.