Research Methodology
CEARCH focuses on estimating a cause area’s cost-effectiveness using quantitative modelling, while gathering evidence from the scientific literature, expert interviews, and beneficiary surveys.
Top Cause for Global Health & Development: Health Policy
We recommend health policy as highly impactful; particularly promising ideas include: (1) preventing hypertension through salt reduction policy (report) and (2) combating diabetes via soda taxes (report). Our recommendation is based on a number of factors:
- High cost-effectiveness: These causes are highly cost-effective (exceeding even GiveWell top charities), because (a) the disease burden of such non-communicable diseases is large, and only growing, as countries get richer and diets & exercise habits worsen; and because (b) policy allows for large-scale impact (since policy has national reach), and low cost per capita (since we leverage less impactful government spending).
- Strong scientific evidence that (a) salt & sugar are risk factors for hypertension & diabetes respectively, and that (b) WHO-recommended interventions, such as reformulating food to reduce their salt content or taxing sugary drinks, do successfully reduce salt & sugar intake.
- Consensus recommendation of experts that these disease burdens are large and only growing, and that prevention is the best solution.
- Beneficiary surveys indicating that potential intangible downsides (e.g. reduced freedom of choice) are marginal relative to the health benefits.
Some top charities within this space, that we have recommend and are funding, include (but are not limited to):
- ImagineLaw: A Philippines-based nonprofit working on health policy. We recommend their salt reduction policy work, given the project’s high cost-effectiveness, and ImagineLaw’s strong track record of advocacy success.
- Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI): A US-based nonprofit working on health policy globally. We recommend their soda taxation work, given the project’s high cost-effectiveness, and GHAI’s strong track record of advocacy success.
Top Cause for Global Catastrophic Risks: Catastrophic Famine
We recommend food security policy to avert catastrophic famine in the event of nuclear and volcanic winter as highly impactful (report). Our recommendation is based on a number of factors:
- Importance: Nuclear war and large volcanic eruptions have the potential to block incoming sunlight, cooling the earth significantly. The ensuing agricultural shortfall could cause famine, placing millions or billions of lives at risk, especially in food importing countries. Critically, the scientific evidence for this being a real risk is relatively strong for a global catastrophic risk, unlike more speculative problems.
- Tractability: Our research suggests that a modest country-level advocacy campaign could shift the needle, nudging one or more influential countries towards agricultural resilience in disaster scenarios via fairly mundane policies (e.g. effective food distribution measures, continued trade, and adaptations to the agricultural sector).
- Neglectedness: Global food resilience remains highly neglected, with minimal current work on policy advocacy.
- Cost-effectiveness: Our estimates suggest that this cause is highly cost-effective, though uncertainty is high.
Some top charities within this space, that we have recommend, include (but are not limited to):
- Alliance to Feed the Earth (ALLFED): The leading organization in the area of catastrophic famine. We recommend their catastrophic famine policy work, on the basis of the project’s high cost-effectiveness, and ALLFED’s technical expertise.
Top Cause for EA Meta: Effective Giving in Asia
We recommend effective giving in Asia as highly impactful (report). Our recommendation is based on a number of factors:
- High cost-effectiveness: We estimate a high giving multiplier for initiatives that promote effective giving in high-income East Asian countries (i.e. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan & South Korea), though uncertainty is high.
- Significant impact if successful: A successful effective giving initiative (EGI) in Asia would have high impact, particularly through (a) securing highly-valuable 10% pledges, (b) engaging institutional grantmakers & high net worth individuals (HNWIs), and (c) fundraising for non-pledge public donations.
- Moderate-to-good tractability: CEARCH is cautiously optimistic about tractability, given the success of existing EGIs in Asia, the comparatively low budgetary costs, and the fact that marginal returns are probably near constant at the cause area’s current funding levels.
- Favourable ecosystem-level factors: On balance, ecosystem-level factors suggest that effective giving work in Asia is valuable; despite the scarcity of local EA talent making it difficult to run EGIs in Asia, there are significant funding gaps for highly cost-effective interventions, even as money helps fund the discovery of high-impact new ideas.
Some top charities within this space, that we have recommend, include (but are not limited to):
- EA Taiwan: EA Taiwan is working to build an impact-oriented community in Taiwan. We recommend their pilot effective giving initiative, on the basis of the project’s high cost-effectiveness, and the requested budget being very small.
External Views
CEARCH is not alone in finding some of the above philanthropic cause areas promising.
- GiveWell released a report in 2025 estimating that salt reduction is a highly cost-effective intervention that saves a life per USD 855 spent.
- Charity Entrepreneurship concurred with our recommendation of salt reduction policy and soda taxes as highly cost-effective ideas, and attempted to incubate both ideas in their 2026 July-September incubation round.
- All this is in line with the international consensus; the World Health Organization’s Best Buy report and the World Bank’s Disease Control Priorities report also recommend salt reduction policy and soda taxation as highly cost-effective ways of improving public health.
- A fellow EA grantmaker has prepared but not yet published a report on worst-case food security; it finds that global food security is plausibly threatened by severe nuclear war (and by engineered agricultural pathogens), and recommends, as the top priority solution, policy advocacy advancing specific contingency plans for worst-case food security.
