Keynote 2 – Intervention Development Science: Do we need it? What would it do?

Abstract
Scholars, NGOs and funding agencies often struggle to determine ‘what works’ to address complex social problems, especially in resource-poor settings. New interventions frequently rely on past activities that were designed for different problems or settings or ‘good guesses.’ Consequently, complex social interventions rarely receive adequate investment in ‘research and development’ (R&D), which has meant that substantial money has been invested (and likely wasted) on implementing and evaluating intervention prototypes before they were ready. This raises the question: Do we need an Intervention Development Science (IDS) to improve the methods we use to generate evidence for interventions that address complex social problems? This talk will offer some thoughts about potential IDS methods to generate evidence that might strengthen the delivery, uptake and effectiveness of an intervention.