Presented at the 2017 American Evaluation Association Conference

1. Building the Ship as it Sails
Challenges and Strategies to Assess
and Enhance Evaluation Capacity in
the Real World
Stephanie Watson-Grant, Lauren Hart,
Emily Weaver, and Khou Xiong
MEASURE Evaluation
University of North Carolina
Susan Settergren
MEASURE Evaluation
Palladium
American Evaluation Association
Conference, 2017

2. MEASURE Evaluation
Project Overview
Global, five-year, $180M cooperative
agreement
Strategic objective:
Strengthen capacity in developing countries to
gather, interpret, and use data to improve
health

3. MEASURE Evaluation
Phase IV Results Framework
Strengthened collection, analysis, and use of
routine health data
Improved country capacity to manage health
information systems, resources, and staff
Methods, tools, and approaches improved and
applied to address health information challenges
and gaps
Increased capacity for rigorous evaluation

4. MEASURE Evaluation
Global Footprint (>40 Countries)

5. • Development of framework and tools for evaluation capacity
assessment and development of a capacity building plan
• 5 pilots (1 more planned)
• Today: discuss experiences, promising practices, and solutions
to address the challenges inherent in assessing, planning, and
monitoring evaluation capacity in practice.
*Evaluation capacity building
Assessing and Planning for ECB*
Background and Session Goal

6. Assessing and Planning for ECB
Framework
• Staffing
• Evaluation design
• Leadership
Human resources
• Operations and management
• Communications
• Workplan developmment
Organizational
resources
• Electronic data capture and storage
• Analysis tools and skills
Technology
• Fieldwork planning
• Data collection
• Data analysis and report writing
• Data dissemination
Data collection,
analysis, and use

7. • Kenya
• Malawi
• Kenya
• South Africa
• Uganda
• Botswana (planned)
Assessing and Planning for ECB
Pilots
Map from simplemaps.com

8. Small group discussions – 20 minutes
• Facilitators spend 1-2 minutes introducing their theme in the
context of their country pilot.
• Each group discusses their particular theme/challenge.
• Kenya (Stephanie Watson-Grant)
• Malawi (Emily Weaver)
• Kenya (Susan Settergren)
• South Africa (Khou Xiong)
• Methods (Lauren Hart)
Large group wrap-up (Heidi Reynolds)
Assessing and Planning for ECB
Small Group Discussions

9. • Takeaways from group discussions
• Lingering questions
Assessing and Planning for ECB
Wrap-Up
Foradditionalinformation aboutthisactivity,or
toprovide furtherinputintothisdiscussion,
pleasecontactljhart@email.unc.edu.
MEASUREEvaluation alsohastools,reports,and
resources aroundcapacitybuilding, aswellas
manyother importanttopicsrelatedtopublic
health,healthsystemsstrengthening, and
evaluation.
https://www.measureevaluation.org/

10. This presentation was produced with the support of the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) under the terms of MEASURE Evaluation
cooperative agreement AID-OAA-L-14-00004. MEASURE Evaluation is
implemented by the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill in partnership with ICF International; John Snow, Inc.; Management
Sciences for Health; Palladium; and Tulane University. Views expressed are not
necessarily those of USAID or the United States government.
www.measureevaluation.org