Latest Resources

Transforming Gender Norms, Roles, and Power Dynamics for Better Health: Evidence from a Systematic Review of Gender-integrated Health Programs in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

This review presents evidence showing how gender-integrated programming influences health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries: in particular, reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child, and adolescent health; HIV prevention and AIDS response; gender-based violence; tuberculosis; and universal health coverage.[from abstract]

Please find the link to the Transforming Gender Norms, Roles, and Power Dynamics for Better Health: Gender-integrated Programs Reference Document: http://www.hrhresourcecenter.org/node/6086

Emerging Opportunities: Monitoring and Evaluation in a Tech-Enabled World

Various trends are impacting on the field of monitoring and evaluation in the area of international development. Resources have become ever more scarce while expectations for what development assistance should achieve are growing. The search for more efficient systems to measure impact is on.

The Impact of Family Planning Programs on Unmet Need and Demand for Contraception

This article aims to shed additional light on this issue by analyzing data drawn from recent Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 63 developing countries. The first section reviews general levels and trends in unmet need, demand, and use over the course of the fertility transition. The second section presents different types of evidence of program effects, including results from a controlled experiment and from country case studies. The evidence indicates a program impact on both unmet need and demand.

Voluntary Family Planning Programs that Respect, Protect and Fulfill Human Rights: A Conceptual Framework

This paper presents a practical approach for realizing human rights as part of voluntary, high-quality family planning programming. The framework provides a pathway for voluntary family planning programs to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights as they set out to improve health and achieve ambitious family planning goals. This comprehensive framework brings together human rights laws and principles with FP quality of care frameworks to assist policymakers, program managers, donors, and civil society with program design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.

International Human Rights Bodies on Unwanted Pregnancy and Abortion - Part 2

This publication, which contains four different parts and was updated in June 2014, presents human rights agreements, treaties and policies that address maternal mortality, unwanted pregnancy and abortion as they relate to global reproductive rights work. Part 2: Statements from regional treaties, human rights commissions, Special Rapporteurs, and other intergovernmental bodies.

International Human Rights Bodies on Unwanted Pregnancy and Abortion - Part 1

This publication, which contains four different parts and was updated in June 2014, presents human rights agreements, treaties and policies that address maternal mortality, unwanted pregnancy and abortion as they relate to global reproductive rights work. Part 1: Statements under UN human rights treaties and from treaty monitoring committees, Special Rapporteurs, regional human rights courts and commissions.

International Human Rights Bodies on Unwanted Pregnancy and Abortion - Part 3

This publication, which contains four different parts and was updated in June 2014, presents human rights agreements, treaties and policies that address maternal mortality, unwanted pregnancy and abortion as they relate to global reproductive rights work. Part 3: Country-Specific Treaty Monitoring Committee Concluding Observations, Universal Periodic Review Working Group recommendations, and recommendations by Special Rapporteurs, commissions, and courtsCountries A-L.

Improving Health Care: The Results and Legacy of the USAID Health Care Improvement Project

This report is not just a summary of a USAID-funded project: It is an extensively-documented milestone for global efforts to improve health in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Increasingly, the central strategy for global health efforts to save lives focuses on selected, high impact interventions. Organizations have
supported these interventions chiefly by providing the required resources, such as training, drugs, and technical
assistance. But in order to implement any kind of service, the health system uses standardized processes for both
clinical and non-clinical activities.

Market Research Needs Assessment: Understanding Health Care Improvement Information Needs of Key Stakeholders in the Uganda Health System

In an effort to support country-wide learning in improvement initiatives, the USAID ASSIST Project conducted an information needs assessment with government and non-governmental organization (NGO) staff working at the national and district levels of the Ugandan health system from March 2014 to June 2014.

Making Health Care about People: Applying People-centered Care Principles to Family Planning Improvement Work in West Africa

The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a new strategy on people-centered health care that places a strong focus on the re-orienting the health system as a whole, including the importance of engaging community and patient groups. ASSIST principles of people-centeredness are complementary to the WHO strategy, particularly with respect to coordination and continuity of care, information, and the micro-level interactions between a client and the health care service delivery team that promote or hinder people-centeredness.

District Health Management Information System (DHMIS) Standard Operating Procedures: Provincial Level

These Standard Operating Procedures aim to clarify the responsibilities and procedures for effective management of aggregated routine health services. These SOPs for provinces present basic and practical steps to be followed by
provincial health information management personnel, programme/line managers and clinic supervisors at provincial level to ensure that data is appropriately handled and used to improve service delivery at local level, prior
to submission to next level of the health system, within the specified time frames.

District Health Management Information System (DHMIS) Standard Operating Procedures: National Level

These Standard Operating Procedures aim to clarify the responsibilities and procedures for effective management of aggregated routine health services. These SOPs for the National DoH present basic and practical steps to be
followed by national health information management personnel, programme/line managers and clinic supervisors at national level to ensure that data is appropriately handled and used to improve service delivery at local level, prior
to submission to next level of the health system, within the specified time frames.

How Much Will Health Coverage Cost? Future Health Spending Scenarios in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico

As Latin American countries seek to expand the coverage and benefits provided by their health systems under a global drive for universal health coverage (UHC), decisions taken today – whether by government or individuals – will have an impact tomorrow on public spending requirements. To understand the implications of these decisions and define needed policy reforms, this paper calculates long-term projections for public spending on health in three countries, analyzing different scenarios related to population, risk factors, labor market participation, and technological growth.

United States Government. Global Health Principles Monitoring and Evaluation Resource Guide

This guide provides clear monitoring and evaluation definitions, global indicators, and country-level indicators for a variety of U.S. agencies, to enabled them to collaborate more closely on shared objectives in global health. Interagency teams worked together, with MEASURE/Evaluation, to explore existing monitoring approaches, review the evidence, and develop meaningful and specific indicators. [from resource]

Effective Coverage: A Metric for Monitoring Universal Health Coverage

A major challenge in monitoring universal health coverage (UHC) is identifying an indicator that can adequately capture the multiple components underlying the UHC initiative. Effective coverage, which unites individual and intervention characteristics into a single metric, offers a direct and flexible means to measure health system performance at different levels. We view effective coverage as a relevant and actionable metric for tracking progress towards achieving UHC.

Partnering with African Faith-Based Organizations for a Strong Health Workforce

This technical brief presents examples from the Africa Christian Health Associations Platform and its members’ efforts to strengthen human resources for health (HRH) and integrate FBOs into national health systems and the HRH community. The brief highlights achievements in selected areas, provides lessons learned, and offers seven key recommendations for furthering FBOs’ efforts. [from introduction]

Global Governance for Health

The authors address the issue of governance in health from a critical standpoint, taking globalization as the core focus. They discuss the issue of governance in health based on the trend of stimulating world production/consumption in accordance with the interests of developed countries. [from abstract]

The Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission of HIV Cascade Analysis Tool: Supporting Health Managers to Improve Facility-Level Service Delivery

The objective of the prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (pMTCT) cascade analysis tool is to
provide frontline health managers at the facility level with the means to rapidly, independently and quantitatively
track patient flows through the pMTCT cascade, and readily identify priority areas for clinic-level improvement
interventions. [from abstract]

Measuring Customer Service in a Private Hospital

This study measures service quality management in a private hospital in Gauteng, South Africa. This was done by
determining the current standard of service quality management, identifying the gap between the value and the satisfaction of the service quality dimensions, as well as the influence of gender on the perception of service quality. [from abstract]

The “Empty Void” is a Crowded Space: Health Service Provision at the Margins of Fragile and Conflict Affected States

Definitions of fragile states focus on state willingness and capacity to ensure security and provide essential
services, including health. Conventional analyses and subsequent policies that focus on state-delivered essential services miss many developments in severely disrupted healthcare arenas. The research seeks to gain insights about the large sections of the health field left to evolve spontaneously by the absent or diminished state. ]from abstract]

Impact and Sustainability of an Accredited Paediatric Nursing Training Programme in Ghana

In this qualitative descriptive study, we explored the perceived impact and sustainability of the first accredited
Paediatric Nursing Training Programme (PNTP) in Ghana, established in 2010 by a north-south Ghanaian-Canadian
partnership to address child health care access and quality issues in the country. [from abstract]

Engaging Frontline Health Providers in Improving the Quality of Health Care Using Facility-Based Improvement Collaboratives in Afghanistan: Case Study

Quality of care can be significantly improved by engaging teams of frontline workers to identify problems and find local solutions for those problems. Based on the results achieved in Kunduz, Balkh, and Kabul, the collaborative improvement work was expanded from 2010–2012 to seven more provinces. The results achieved on the ground also led the MoPH to establish a unit for quality and a national health care quality improvement strategy for Afghanistan. [from abstract]

A South African Public-Private Partnership HIV Treatment Model: Viability and Success Factors

The increasing number of people requiring HIV treatment in South Africa calls for efficient use of its human
resources for health in order to ensure optimum treatment coverage and outcomes. This paper describes an innovative
public-private partnership model which uses private sector doctors to treat public sector patients and ascertains the
model’s ability to maintain treatment outcomes over time. [from abstract]

The Service Delivery Underperformance Index: A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring the Inadequacies in Service Delivery

A new approach to the measurement of service delivery is introduced. The Service Delivery Underperformance Index (SDUI)
adapts the Alkire and Foster (2011) methodology used for poverty measurement to measure the underperformance, or multiple inadequacies, in service delivery. [from abstract]

Assessment of Prevalence and Determinants’ of Occupational Exposure to HIV Infection Among Health Care Workers in Selected Health Institutions in Debre Birhan Town, North Shoa Zone, Amhara Region, Ethiopia, 2014

Health care workers are exposed to different kinds of occupational hazards due to their day to day activities. The most common occupational exposure like body fluids are a potential risk of transmission of blood born infection like human immunodeficiency virus. [from abstract]