Eric Djimeu

Eric serves as the Evaluation Officer for the Support to Large-scale Combination Prevention Evaluation Studies project and as such is responsible for quality assurance services related to the proposals and studies, funded under this project, to evaluate combination prevention approaches to HIV/AIDS. In this role he coordinates the work of expert advisors and liaises with the funders and the research teams. Eric also assists the 3ie evaluation office in providing quality assurance for impact evaluations funded under our Open Window and Thematic Window grant programs.

Blogs by author

Demand creation for voluntary medical male circumcision: how can we influence emotional choices?

This year in anticipation of World AIDS Day, UNAIDS is focusing more attention on reducing new infections as opposed to treatment expansion. As explained by Center for Global Development’s Mead Over in his blog post, reducing new infections is crucial for easing the strain on government budgets for treatment as well as for eventually reaching “the AIDS transition” when the total number of people living with HIV begins to decline.

Requiring fuel gauges: A pitch for justifying impact evaluation sample size assumptions

We expect researchers to defend their assumptions when they write papers or present at seminars. Well, we expect them to defend most of their assumptions. However, the assumptions behind their sample size, determined by their power calculations, are rarely discussed. Sample sizes and power calculations matter. Power calculations determine sample size requirements, which match budget constraints with minimum sample size requirements.

Can we learn more from clinical trials than simply methods?

What if scientists directly tested their drug ideas on humans without first demonstrating their potential efficacy in labs? This question sounds hypothetical because we all know that using untested drugs can be potentially dangerous. If we were then to use the same logic, should we not be exercising similar caution with randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social and economic development interventions involving human subjects?

Special feature for World AIDS Day 2012

There has been only a small decline in the prevalence of HIV in the last decade, dropping from 5.9 percent to 5 percent between 2001 and 2009 for those aged 15-49 (UNAIDS, 2010). This decrease, whilst important, does not seem impressive compared to over US$5 billion spent fighting AIDS in low and middle income countries each year (the latest available figure is US$5.1 billion in 2008).