Featured Projects

MEASURE Evaluation

Measuring success and improving programs and global health outcomes require strong evaluation methodologies and data.

MEASURE Evaluation develops and promotes cost-effective and efficient approaches in data collection, monitoring, and evaluation of population, health, and nutrition services worldwide to improve human health and well-being. The project covers family planning, maternal and child health and nutrition, HIV and AIDS, malaria, and TB.

We are a key component of the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Monitoring and Evaluation to Assess and Use Results (MEASURE) Framework, and promote a continuous cycle of data demand, collection, analysis and utilization to improve population and health conditions.

Since 1997, MEASURE Evaluation has worked to strengthen monitoring and evaluation functions and systems and build institutional capabilities that are essential to:

• better judge the effectiveness of adopted interventions and approaches
• produce technically sound and usable results
• determine the performance of sector assistance, and
• enable sound decisions regarding resource allocations.

Our researchers and technical advisers have extensive field experience and are innovators in demography, epidemiology, economics, statistics, medical anthropology, and clinical health sciences.

Areas of technical expertise include:

• development, testing and use of accurate, cost-effective tools and methods for monitoring and evaluation
• improving the performance of routine health information systems for more effective health system management
• development and delivery of training to build capabilities of individuals and in-country organizations
• evaluating the economic, social and cultural factors of particular relevance to health programs and public policy.

MEASURE Evaluation is funded by USAID and is implemented by the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in partnership with Constella Futures, ORC Macro, JSI, and Tulane University.

Constella Futures staff has particular responsibilities for the Data Demand and Information Use component of the project. Specific technical assistance activities in this component include:

• Development of and implementation of Data Use tools, including the Data Use Calendar, Information Flow Mapping, Assessment of Data Use Constraints, and participatory assessment techniques to ensure full stakeholder involvement in designing country-level Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) activities.
• Development of curriculum materials on data utilization and on communication of M&E information to decision-makers.
• Incorporating data utilization plans in all country-level activities.
• Promoting innovative technologies for facilitating data use (GIS systems and mapping; decision-support systems; resource allocation models).
• Providing project staff, M&E advisors, and host-country M&E officers with a toolkit of methods and techniques for facilitating use of M&E data for policy development, planning, and program and project design, management and evaluation.

In support of the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Global Fund, Constella Futures staff has developed a package of tools to assess program and project M&E plans and systems. The toolkit includes: an M&E self-assessment tool to be used at the beginning of a program or project to assess the strength of the M&E system to collect and report data to measure indicators; a Data Quality Audit tool to audit the M&E system and indicator data; and a tool to assure the quality of program level indicators, designed to help M&E staff overcome major quality challenges related to program level indicators.

Constella Futures staff has also taken the lead in the development of M&E tools for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), and in providing support for targeted evaluations in the areas of palliative care, adherence, and OVCs.

MEASURE Evaluation is committed to generating effective demand for quality health and population data and ensuring that our ideas, methods, techniques, tools, data, and analyses are widely available. Our virtual library is available on the MEASURE Evaluation Web site: http://www.cpc.unc.edu/measure