This Guide documents pioneering methodologies used by civil society organizations around the developing world to hold their governments to account for the use of public resources. Specific methodologies examined by the Guide include social audits, citizen report cards, public expenditure tracking surveys, procurement monitoring tools, and participatory auditing tools. These methodologies are considered in detailed case studies presenting the work of 17 organizations from 12 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Guide will enable readers to gain familiarity with the typical processes followed by national-level governments during the execution of budgets, management of procurements, measurement of impact achieved by expenditures, and oversight of budget expenditures through audits and legislative supervision. For each of these processes, the Guide provides practical tools and techniques that readers can use to monitor the results achieved by government expenditures.
Useful Resources
Equal opportunities for health action for development is a project implemented by 29 European partners and associates from the health community with the aim to mobilise public support in Europe for Global Health and Health Equity as a strategy and policy for more equitable North-South relations and poverty reduction in developing countries.
APHRC’s research focuses on improving understanding of population and health issues through development and implementation of innovative, policy-oriented research programs to address the region’s key population and health challenges. APHRC’s research focus is organized into four themes: Urbanization and wellbeing; Population and Reproductive Health; Health Challenges and Systems; and Education. These research priorities have been selected to respond to needs identified by African governments and by multinational bodies and frameworks including the MDGs, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union, and the World Health Organization, among others. Within each theme, we particularly focus on areas where there are considerable knowledge gaps and where building on our past investments and current strengths holds the greatest potential to improve the wellbeing of Africans. Our methods include primary research projects where we collect new data; secondary analysis of existing data; synthesis of evidence; scenario building; and monitoring and evaluation of interventions. We also seek to develop and use new methodologies, partnering with other institutions as needed.
Local governments have an important role to play in enhancing the wellbeing of forest communities, yet often lack the capacity to understand and address local needs. This source book provides a useful resource for local governments, local communities, development practitioners and civil society organisations interested in reducing poverty through more participatory approaches with forest communities. They offer a positive concept of sustained human wellbeing and security that extends beyond sufficiency of income and food, and emphasises the potential role of forests in enhancing community wellbeing.
The updated HRET Disparities Toolkit gives hospitals, health systems, clinics, and health plans the information and resources needed for collecting race, ethnicity, and primary language data from patients. In order to make this invaluable Toolkit more accessible to all health care providers, the Toolkit is now available free of charge. HRET’s Disparities Toolkit helps clinicians and administrators at all levels learn the why and how of collecting race, ethnicity, and primary language data from patients. The Toolkit is useful for educating and informing hospital staff about the importance of data collection, how to implement a framework to collect the data, and how to use these data to improve quality of care for all populations.
Trade justice is about giving poor people and countries the chance to work their own way out of poverty; giving farmers the chance to earn enough to feed their families and to send their children to school; allowing industries to develop, creating jobs and opportunities. But instead of trade justice, free trade is being forced on developing countries. It is hurting poor people, not helping them. And it is undermining democracy by denying poor people a greater say in the decisions that affect their lives. In 2005, unprecedented numbers of people campaigned for trade justice as part of the Make Poverty History campaign. With the UK government starting to question the wisdom of
forcing free trade and liberalisation on developing countries, we are making progress. But there’s still some way to go before trade justice becomes a reality for millions of poor people worldwide. This guide addresses what is meant by trade justice, what needs to change, and how the campaign will help make poverty history.
AcademyHealth launched a new online resource that provides researchers collaborating across disciplines with an easy-to-use tool for understanding health services research methods. The site includes an overview of the language, training resources, and analytic techniques used by researchers from different academic backgrounds and provides a forum for discussing methods used in the published literature. The site is designed as a launching pad for future methods training to improve understanding of HSR across disciplines and support ongoing development and refinement of HSR methods in general.
Health Research Web provides easily accessible information that will:
* facilitate discussions among stakeholders at country level on strengthening their national health research systems;
* enable donors to better align their efforts to national research priorities
* increase accountability of researchers to national health priorities;
* form of a ‘portal’ for health research systems information in low and middle income countries allowing northern institutions and interested donors to find partners in the South.
For the first time in history, all the significant literary, artistic, and scientific works of mankind can be digitally preserved and made freely available, in every corner of the world, for our education, study, and appreciation and that of all our future generations.
HSRProj a free database coordinated by the National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) for the National Library of Medicine. It carries evidence and expert testimony, links to research partners, and listings on current research projects.