Many development interventions appear to leave no trace of sustained positive change after they have been terminated. This guidance document was developed by the Network of Networks on Impact Evaluation to support its focus on sharing methods and learning-by-doing to promote the practice of impact evaluation. It shows you how to identify the type and scope of the intervention by agreeing on the objectives of the intervention that are valued, articulating the theories linking interventions to outcomes, addressing the issue of attribution and building on existing knowledge relevant to the impact intervention. It also shows you how to manage impact evalulations by determining the feasibility of impact evaluation, gathering data and conducting front-end planning. It puts forward the idea that rigorous impact evaluation is not merely about specific methods and designs, but also about addressing the issues given above, in particular the core methodological and conceptual issues.
Useful Resources
This training manual, published by the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance II (FANTA-2) Project, recognises that nutrition interventions are an important component of comprehensive care and support for people living with HIV. They help to manage symptoms, promote response to treatment and improving functioning and quality of life. The authors argue that equipping nurses, who in many settings play a critical role in HIV care, with nutrition and HIV knowledge and skills enables them to provide effective nutrition care and support. The manual is organised into three parts: Part I includes introductory sessions with basic information about HIV, Part II aims to build technical knowledge and Part III provides guidance on nutrition care for different clients living with HIV. This training manual is designed to be used for pre-service training, but it can also be used or adapted for in-service training – an advantage considering the fact that nursing school curricula in the East, Central and Southern Africa region often includes little or no information on the subject.
This operations manual provides guidance on planning and delivering HIV prevention, care and treatment services at health centres in countries with high HIV prevalence. It gives an operational framework to ensure that HIV services can be provided in an integrated, efficient and quality-assured manner. It is based on the decentralised public health approach to scaling up HIV services in resource-constrained settings, which includes simple, standardised regimens and formularies; standardised supervision and patient monitoring approaches; as well as integrated delivery of care at primary health centres within a district network. This manual is written as a learning aid and job aid for the health centre team, and in particular the health centre manager (often an in-charge nurse). The authors, however, contend that district management teams, which supervise and support health centre services, should also find this manual helpful, as should national Ministries of Health and other partners responsible for planning and supporting the decentralisation of HIV services.
Complex policy issues cannot be solved by government alone. Delivering high-quality public services at the least cost and achieving shared public policy goals requires innovative approaches and greater involvement of citizens. This book is a valuable source of information on government performance in fostering open and inclusive policy making in 25 countries. It offers rich insights into current practice through 14 in-depth country case studies and 18 opinion pieces from leading civil society and government practitioners. It includes 10 guiding principles to support open and inclusive policy making and service delivery in practice.
The website for the Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems has re-launched with a new range of applications designed to improve the navigation and accessibility of information hosted on the site. The Taskforce report and Working Group reports are currently available to download in five languages: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, with other languages, including Chinese mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese due to be added in the forthcoming weeks. The website encourages interactivity with video footage of recent consultation events and speeches from Gordon Brown, Dr Margaret Chan and Glenys Kinnock. A blog page and feedback form have also been added to ensure that a constant stream of communication can be maintained between the Taskforce, civil society and other interested parties.
This is a practical, do-it-yourself guide for leaders and facilitators wanting to help organisations, such as social movements, function and develop in more healthy, human and effective ways. The guide, with its supporting website, includes tried and tested concepts, approaches, stories and activities, and was developed by a global team of collaborating practitioners and activists. It offers a perspective on why organisations exist and the real role they play, and the importance of supporting local sovereignty of local organisations and social movements for meaningful social change. It provides a range of approaches to self-understanding as well as understanding the role of leaders and facilitators aiming to facilitate change in organisations. It looks at the significance of relationships and power dynamics, including tracking how organisations move through various phases of development, how change can be facilitated and the challenges faced in implementing or sustaining change.
Mobile fundraising is emerging as a new tool for organisations to identify potential donors to raise money. Mobile phones are being used across the world to raise money for social causes such as disaster relief, poverty, cancer research, rescuing abandoned animals and supporting other human needs. This manual examines the effectiveness of non-profit and non-governmental organisations using mobile phones to build their constituent lists, influence political causes, support case studies and raise money. Areas covered include: mobile fundraising for humanitarian relief, partnerships between charities and commercial entities, harnessing media and the entertainment industry, the interplay between donors and activists, and calculating the return on your investment in mobile fundraising. It concludes with some examples of mobile fundraising and the lessons learnt.
This assessment guide leads you through a five-step process to document aspects of the denial of the right to health care in your country. It suggests how to lobby and set up activist strategies for addressing the violations you identify. The steps, in brief, aim to answer the following questions. Step 1: What are your government’s commitments? Step 2: Are your government’s policies appropriate to fulfill these obligations? Step 3: Is the health system of your country adequately implementing interventions to realize the right to health and health care for all? Step 4: Does the health status of different social groups and the population as a whole reflect a progression in their right to health and health care? Step 5: What does the denial or fulfillment of the right to health in your country mean in practice? In this final step, you should systematically contrast the obligations outlined in Step 1 with the realities documented in Steps 2, 3 and 4, and briefly highlight the main areas of denial of health rights in your country.
Primary health care is at the heart of the plans to transform the health services in South Africa. This document provides an integrated package of essential primary health care services available to the entire population will provide the solid foundations of a single, unified health system. It as the driving force in promoting equity in health care. The document sets out the norms and standards that are to be made available in the essential package of primary care services, for individuals to see what quality of primary care services they can expect to receive. It also acts as guidance for provincial and district health authorities to provide these services. The document contains norms and standards for clinic and community services. A noorm is defined as a statistical normative rate of provision or measurable target outcome over a specified period of time.
A standard is defined as a statement about a desired and acceptable level of health care. Standard setting takes place within specific dimensions of quality -- acceptability, accessibility, appropriateness, continuity, effectiveness, efficiency, equity, interpersonal relations, technical competence and safety. The most important dimensions have been chosen for each service.
Clinical trial reports usually give estimates of treatment effects, their confidence intervals and p values. But what do these terms mean? The statistical methods and their technical meaning are well established. However, there is less clarity about the concise interpretative wording that authors should use, especially in the abstract and conclusions and by others in commentaries. This article offers guidance and assumes that one short sentence needs to capture the essence of a trial's findings for the primary endpoint. It explains technical terms simply and aims to help researchers to achieve this objective in their writing.