2007
- Provided input into Rapid Assessment Health Facility Assessment (HFA) Assessment tool to Enhance Quality and Access at the Primary Health Care Level. The tool was a collaborative effort produced by USAID, the World Bank, the Child Survival and Technical Support Project (CSTS+), MEASURE Evaluation, and CORE Group and is designed specifically to aid managers to assess the quality and access to child health services at the primary level, namely first level facilities.
- Updated the standardized malaria indicators into the revised Knowledge, Practice and Coverage (KPC) survey tool. The KPC survey provides a rapid, easy-to-use means of assessing progress of child survival programs. The survey also fosters local participation by engaging community members in identifying health priorities and in monitoring community health status.
- Sponsored an Elluminate session entitled CSHGP Lives Saved Analysis: Estimating Child Survival Impact from Project Outcome Data. The session, hosted by Jim Ricca, MD, MPH of the Child Survival and Technical Support Project (CSTS+), provided an overview of the Child Survival and Health Grants Program Lives Saved calculator. The calculator is heavily based on the calculation sheets used by the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group or CHERG (also known as "the Bellagio Group") for the series in the Lancet in 2003 on Child Survival and in 2005 on Neonatal Health. The present calculator was developed by CSTS+ in collaboration with Saul Morris of the CHERG so that it would be usable for NGO project data.
2008-2009
The M&E Working Group hosted a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) meeting, in which practitioners developed new guidelines for parallel sampling. Two documents were developed as a result of the meeting, including:
The Parallel Sampling document provides guidance for using the Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) parallel sampling methodology for conducting multiple surveys at the same time from different sample groups using the same logistical system. The U.S. Agency for International Development's Rapid CORE Assessment Tool for Child Health (Rapid CATCH) establishes a set of indicators, several with different denominators, required of all grantees supported by the Child Survival and Health Grants Program. Rapid CATCH 2007 indicators are used to illustrate the parallel sampling methodology.The Q&A Guide provides some of the most common questions about the use of parallel sampling. Questions include:
- When should/shouldn't I use LQAS?
- If I just want a coverage estimate (mean and confidence interval) at the level of the project area, and am not worried about performance of indicators within sub-project areas (e.g., supervision areas), is LQAS for me?
- What criteria should guide the selection of Supervision Areas?
- May LQAS results be stratified by ethnic group, gender, and other variables of interest?
- Why is a sample size of 19 sufficient? When is a sample size of 19 too small?
- At what point do you stop collecting data on an indicator?
- How many times do you go back to a house?
- If there is more than one respondent in a household, should they be included in the surve