The World Health Organisation identifies alcohol as among the world's major public health challenges, especially in cities of the Global South, for both its direct effects (ie cirrhosis, injuries) and its contribution to a "double burden" of infectious and chronic disease. This project will have significant academic, practitioner, policy and civil society impacts.

Relay aims to promote informed and inclusive public debate on key issues raised by research on critical development themes. The programme builds skills for in-depth, critical journalism which engages with development research and aims to break down barriers and build better links between research communities and the media in 12 countries across Southern Africa, Eastern Africa and South Asia.

The purpose of this project is to bring existing research and knowledge together to assist DFID, and others, to provide guidance and demonstrate how agriculture can be part of post 2012 climate change agreements.

This project undertook research, training in research skills, organisational capacity strengthening and policy development and policy influencing. The programme hypothesises that there is scope for governance reforms that work ‘with the grain’ of African societies in such a way that they mitigate the most negative consequences of prevailing practices.

Vijay Kumar, Young Lives Policy Brief 17, 2012, 4 pages

Malnutrition causes long-term damage to children’s development, with huge social and economic costs. It affects not only children’s physical development but also their cognitive development, so reducing future productivity and leading ultimately to economic loss for the nation as a whole.

iiG Policy Lesson 02, Gender and Growth: Empowering women in the process of development, 2012, 8 pages

In the factors that underlie growth – health, education and the law – women are disadvantaged. In the mechanisms of growth which the iiG programme has investigated – insurance against risks, aspirations and access to capital – women can also be disadvantaged.

M. Remme, A. Vassall, B. Lutz & C. Watts, Lancet, 2012, 1 page

Letter to The Lancet by STRIVE researchers highlighting the multi-sector benefits of interventions that address the structural drivers of HIV. As AIDS funding shrinks, measures that address the social and economic drivers of HIV are in danger of being overlooked.

A. Pain, SLRC Working Paper 3. ODI, 2012, 68 pages

This paper is a contribution to a broader comparative review by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) of the current state of evidence and understanding on livelihoods, service delivery and social protection in fragile states.

P. Kristjanson, H. Neufeldt, A. Gassner, J. Mango, F.B. Kyazze, et al. Food Security, 2012

This article explores the relationship between farming practice changes made by households coping with the huge demographic, economic, and ecological changes they have seen in the last 10 years and household food security.

A. De Haan & W. Warmerdam, Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre (ESID), 2012, 37 pages

Based on a systematic review of the impacts of aid on both state capacity for, and elite commitment to, sustainable development, this paper concludes that a better understanding of the impact of aid has the potential to directly inform practices of international development.

GDNet, a knowledge hub that brings together and communicates policy-relevant research from the global south, has recently launched a new campaign to encourage members of the development research and policy communities to adopt a more inclusive approach to southern researchers’ knowledge.

The DFID Growth Research News quarterly e-newsletter provides a useful portal to a broad spectrum of information collated from DFID supported programmes and provides an up-to-date summary of current developments in global economic research.

A new study maps hotspots of human-animal infectious diseases and emerging disease outbreaks. The maps reveal animal-borne disease as a heavy burden for one billion of world’s poor and new evidence on zoonotic emerging disease hotspots in the United States and western Europe.

A new book, published in the STEPS Centre’s Pathways to Sustainability book series, takes a fresh look at the livestock sector in the Horn of Africa. Through 20 detailed empirical chapters, the book highlights diverse pathways of development, going beyond the standard ‘aid’ and ‘disaster’ narratives.

Nutritional indicators, haemoglobin and child’s attendance at school does not seem to be improved by deworming programmes in most trials, a recent systematic review has shown, apart from 3 trials published over 15 years ago - two from the same high endemicity locality.

On the 4th July, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and DFID launched a new learning resource to support ongoing learning and development on climate change. The learning resource is presented in the form of an interactive PDF; clickable links between sections are embedded, as well as links to themed outputs from the Learning Hub.

R4D contains a searchable database of more than 5,000 project records and the details of more than 30,000 outputs from research funded by DFID’s Research and Evidence Division during the past 10 years. It also includes research activities prior to 2005 in Rural Livelihoods, Health, Social Sciences, Education, and Infrastructure and Urban Development. Every month we add new projects, documents, and outputs.

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