Minimum Resource Threshold Policy Under Partial Interference

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for designing resource allocation policies that meet specific health outcome targets while accounting for interference effects within groups, demonstrated through a sanitation policy case in Senegal.

Contribution

The paper develops a nonparametric, doubly robust approach to estimate minimum resource thresholds for outcome targets under interference, with theoretical guarantees and practical application.

Findings

The proposed policy outperforms existing methods in simulations.

Application to Senegal sanitation data shows effective increase in health outcomes.

The method provides statistically sound estimates with excess risk bounds.

Abstract

When developing policies for prevention of infectious diseases, policymakers often set specific, outcome-oriented targets to achieve. For example, when developing a vaccine allocation policy, policymakers may want to distribute them so that at least a certain fraction of individuals in a census block are disease-free and spillover effects due to interference within blocks are accounted for. The paper proposes methods to estimate a block-level treatment policy that achieves a pre-defined, outcome-oriented target while accounting for spillover effects due to interference. Our policy, the minimum resource threshold policy (MRTP), suggests the minimum fraction of treated units required within a block to meet or exceed the target level of the outcome. We estimate the MRTP from empirical risk minimization using a novel, nonparametric, doubly robust loss function. We then characterize statistical properties of the estimated MRTP in terms of the excess risk bound. We apply our methodology to design a water, sanitation, and hygiene allocation policy for Senegal with the goal of increasing the proportion of households with no children experiencing diarrhea to a level exceeding a specified threshold. Our policy outperforms competing policies and offers new approaches to design allocation policies, especially in international development for communicable diseases.