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Evaluation and research

Evaluation

Research

Evaluation

Evaluation plays an important role in child health and, more in general, in public health. Progress towards the targets originally set needs to be monitored periodically to see whether strategy implementation is moving in the right direction and to revise plans according to the findings.

Before countries start expanding activities related to IMCI ( Integrated Management of Child Health) in the country, they conduct a formal review to summarize the lessons learnt and plan for expansion based on the findings. Most countries in the Region have over the years conducted such reviews in close collaboration with the Regional office.

The Regional office has also recommended that countries periodically review programme implementation also during the expansion phase, especially when a substantial proportion of health facilities has been covered. It has proposed for this purpose an approach which includes the preparation of a background document followed by the conduct of a workshop.

Data collected during follow-up visits carried out after IMCI training are also used as database to monitor health provider and health system performance in facilities which implement IMCI.

Once a sizeable number of health facilities has been covered in a country during the expansion phase, a few countries have carried out health facility surveys on the quality of outpatient child health services, or IMCI health facility surveys, in close collaboration with and with full support of the Regional office. The methodology has been adapted in the Region, to better respond to country needs and analyse in detail the information collected.

These surveys, in the way they are carried out in the Region, provide a substantial amount of both quantitative and qualitative information that is useful to re-direct priorities and implementation as needed, revise plans and advocate for policies.

It is hoped that more financial resources will be made available to child health in the future, to enable the conduct of evaluations also in other countries which have expressed interest in them. This helps document with hard data the performance of outcome-oriented indicators and, indirectly, also health system progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.

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Research

Research is a key area of development. Most of the priority research in child health in WHO is coordinated by the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

The Regional office has recently embarked on some research work to address emerging child health problems in the Region, such as injuries, and thus respond to country needs.

A new initiative has also been launched on a trial basis to identify priorities for “implementation research” to reduce neonatal and child mortality in selected countries in the Region. The process follows the systematic Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) methodology and aims to identify and prioritize the barriers to implementation of public health interventions aimed at reducing deaths in neonates and children in the country.

Research

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