Table 1.

Summary of the benefits and drawbacks of the three approaches to assessing the effects of context on health outcomes discussed in this paper.

	Relocation RCTs	Small place-based RCTs	Place-based Natural Experiments
Estimated effect	Effect of moving persons	Effect of changing a place	Effect of changing a place
Pros	Analytic rigor	Analytic rigor	Low cost
Cons	Very high cost	May require large number of locations for intervention	Implementation aligned with policy goals Potential for bias due to targeted location selection
	Disruption of existing social networks	Inherent conflict between goal of consistent implementation and community involvement	Potential for bias due to inconsistent implementation
	Does not reflect the full range of realistic policy interventions