The need for better data: What you can do in resource-constrained settings
Posted on Mar 30, 2012
By Marie Connelly, GHDonline
“There is a growing recognition of a need to make monitoring and evaluation (M&E) more effective for programs to use data to understand gaps and improve performance, quality and effectiveness.”
– Dr. Lisa Hirschhorn, Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Quality at Partners In Health
Strengthening local health systems is an implicit goal of many global health initiatives and programs, but ensuring this goal is achieved alongside competing priorities and deliverables can be incredibly challenging, particularly in resource-poor settings.
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From April 2 to 6, GHDonline, in collaboration with Partners In Health and in conjunction with the Program Management Guide, will host an Expert Panel discussion, Integrating M&E for Health Systems Strengthening, to address the ways that Monitoring and Evaluation can be used to assess whether, and how well, programs are being implemented as planned and achieving their goals and objectives.
Leading the discussion, Dr. Hirschhorn is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Senior Clinical Adviser with JSI Research and Training, in addition to her work with Partners In Health. Her research focuses on monitoring, evaluation and improving access, utilization and outcomes of HIV and primary care in resource limited settings, and adherence in people living with HIV. She will be joined on this Expert Panel by Dr. Wesler Lambert, Director of Monitoring and Evaluation for Zanmi Lasante, Haiti and Drs. Pierre Barker, Paulin Basinga, and Kenny Sherr.
For Dr. Hirschhorn, the goals of this panel are “to share successful models of M&E that contribute to evidence-based decisions and empower programs to use data for improvement and stakeholder communication.” We hope that members of the global health community will join us in sharing successful models of M&E for health systems strengthening. As Dr. Hirschhorn notes our ultimate goals for this discussions is “to have identified examples of feasible models that can be replicated and sustained in the current resource constrained environment.”
Participation is easy (via email or online) and made available to all at no cost thanks to the support of founding organizations Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
