Monitoring & Evaluation

In a Cochrane review on the effects of using lay health workers on maternal and child health and infectious disease control, the authors identified 82 trials that showed promising benefits but whose results were heterogeneous. The objective of this research was to use qualitative studies conducted alongside these trials to explore factors and processes that might have influenced intervention outcomes. [adapted from abstract]

This document is a report on the World Health Organization’s annual compilation of health-related data for its 193 Member States. It includes a summary of the progress made towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals and associated targets. [from publisher]

This research article proposes a framework conceptualising global health education in practice to guide the evaluation and monitoring of educational interventions and reforms through a set of key indicators that characterize it. [adapted from abstract]

In order to understand and monitor the progress in developing and implementing HRH policies in the 57 countries experiencing a critical deficit in the health workforce, this tracking survey provides an overview of the current situation in terms of HRH policies, plans, capacities and processes. [from author]

This paper presents a randomized feld experiment on community-based monitoring of public primary health care providers in Uganda. Through two rounds of village meetings, localized NGOs encouraged communities to be more involved with the state of health service provision and strengthened their capacity to hold their local health providers to account for performance. A year after the intervention, treatment communities are more involved in monitoring the provider; health workers appear to exert higher effort to serve the community; and there was a positive impact on child health.

This study describes a novel method to review and evaluate clinical performance in TB management and for evaluating tuberculosis (TB) control at the point of care using a process-based performance review tool to identify missed opportunities for early and accurate TB diagnosis. This tool is a teaching strategy where clinicians retrospectively review patient records to evaluate crucial clinical actions, and has been shown to improve clinical performance. [from author]

The Primary Care Evaluation Tool is an instrument developed to examine the supply and demand-side aspects of primary care (PC). It is intended to support ministries of health and other stakeholders in monitoring the progress of their PC-related policies and reforms and to set new priorities on the basis of evidence-based information with the aim of further strengthening PC. This report gives an overview on the findings of the tool in Serbia. [adapted from abstract]

As a self-contained technical instruction manual, this handbook is intended to provide a practical tool to guide the identification and definition of initial baseline data to be collected in order to provide a descriptive profile of countries’ human resources for health to facilitate monitoring their progress towards achieving their HRH goals over time. [from author]

The 2010 edition of the SAHR focuses on two main issues: Reflections on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Perspectives on a National Health Insurance (NHI) for South Africa. As is customary, the Review ends with the Indicators section which provides a range of indicators relevant to the MDGs and NHI. [from summary]

This discussion paper presents a comprehensive approach to the assessment of individual health worker, team and HRH management performance in the context of health system strengthening and the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 5. It provides examples of lessons learned in the planning, implementation and evaluation of HRH interventions in maternal, neonatal and reproductive health at the community level in the Asia and Pacific regions and considerations for enhanced performance in this area. [from introduction]

The primary purpose of the Data for Improvement and Clinical Excellence Long-Term Care (LTC) project is to assess the effects of a quality improvement audit with feedback intervention delivered monthly over 13 months to healthcare workers in four LTC facilities. [adapted from abstract]

The goal of this document is to provide a quick reference of suggested communication approaches for health researchers and M&E professionals in order to facilitate stakeholders’ use of health information for decision-making. [from author]

The aim of this document is to identify and document promising practices to plan, develop and support national human resources in HIV related strategic information/monitoring and evaluation (M&E). This document adds to recent global M&E system strengthening guidance by compiling examples of promising approaches from a wide range of countries, and is intended for use in the creation of country plans to strengthen the workforce to support a fully functional, national M&E system to ensure strategic information for HIV/AIDS programming. [adapted from summary]

This tool is to be used as a starting point for the collation, analysis and synthesis of data and evidence on human resources for health (HRH), as well as for monitoring the strengths and limitations of the underlying information systems. It has been developed as part of a series of efforts to enhance country capacities to generate, analyse and use data to assess health workforce performance and track progress towards their HRH-related goals. [from publisher]

The goal of this tool is to improve the quality of and access to primary health care services, by monitoring and measuring important performance indicators of the health system at district level. It provides an overview of the delivery of primary health care services in the public health sector across the provinces and districts in South Africa by means of an annual publication including data on nurse clinical workload and clinic supervision rate. [adapted from publisher]

This tool is an instrument for healthcare executives to use in assessing their expertise in critical areas of healthcare management. [adapted from author]

This toolkit has been developed to facilitate the development of a public health workforce competent to meet its assigned mission. One part of that process is the use of competency-based curricula in public health training or education and how to determine the right activities for moving from a competency set to developing a curriculum. [adapted from author]

The core competencies are a set of skills desirable for the broad practice of public health. They reflect the characteristics that staff of public health organizations may want to possess as they work to protect and promote health in the community. The competencies are designed to serve as a starting point for academic and practice organizations to understand, assess, and meet education, training and workforce needs. [adapted from introduction]

Each country profile presents the most recent available information on selected demographic measures of maternal, newborn and child survival and nutritional status, coverage rates for priority interventions, and selected indicators of equity, policy support, human resources and financial flows. [from publisher]

Health care educators need valid and reliable tools to assess evidence based practice (EBP) knowledge and skills. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a modified Fresno Test to assess EBP knowledge and skills relevant to physical therapist practice. [adapted from abstract]

World Health Statistics 2010 contains WHO’s annual compilation of data from its 193 Member States, and includes a summary of progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals and targets. [from publisher]

This handbook offers health managers, researchers and policy makers a comprehensive, standardized and user-friendly reference for monitoring and evaluating human resources for health. It brings together an analytical framework with strategy options for improving the health workforce information and evidence base, as well as country experiences to highlight approaches that have worked. [from preface]

Evidence Based Practice (EBP) involves making clinical decisions informed by the most relevant and valid evidence available. Adopting an evidence-based approach to practice requires differing competencies across various domains including literature searching, critical appraisal and communication. This paper examines the current tools available to assess EBP competence and compares their applicability to existing assessment techniques used in medicine, nursing and health sciences. [from abstract]

This paper aims to describe the design, methods and approaches used to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the skilled care initiative in reducing pregnancy-related and perinatal mortality in Ouargaye district, Burkina Faso. [from summary]

This article offers guidance regarding the benchmarking of health workforce sufficiency as a critical component of monitoring and strengthening the performance of national health systems. [adapted from introduction]

This presentation outlines a methodology to improve quality and accessibility of health care with greater involvement of the community in defining, implementing and monitoring the quality improvement process.

This presentation discusses the QIQ method of evaluating the quality of service delivery and provider performance.

While evaluation is, in theory, a component of training programmes in health planning, training needs in this area remain significant. Improving health systems necessarily calls for having more professionals who are skilled in evaluation. This article describes a four-week course taken by two cohorts of health professionals from 11 francophone African countries. We discuss how the course came to be, its content, its teaching processes and the master’s programme results for students. [from abstract]

Several high-profile meetings have focused global attention on critical human resources for health (HRH) issues, providing much needed high-level support and calls for action to address the HRH crisis. The Capacity Project’s HRH Action Workshop series was intended to extend this work by focusing on specific HRH actions and experiences, what is being done in countries, what is working and what is not.

The community score card process is a community-based monitoring tool that is a hybrid of the techniques of social audits and citizen report cards.The CSC is an instrument to exact social and public accountability and responsiveness from service providers. By linking service providers to the community, citizens are empowered to provide immediate feedback to service providers. [from author]