Evidence for Health (E4H) for Zambia

2020-2025

USAID

Zambia Evidence for Health (E4H) is a five-year project funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Management Systems International (MSI) in close collaboration with the Government of the Republic of Zambia’s (GRZ’s) Ministry of Health (MoH). The program runs from March 2, 2020 to March 1, 2025. 

E4H aims to achieve the following objectives: (1) strengthen the national health management information system (HMIS) owned and managed by the MoH; (2) improve monitoring, evaluation, and research capacities within key government and nongovernmental research institutions; and (3) expand the evidence base for approaches to USAID health programming in malaria, nutrition, family planning, maternal and child health, and HIV.  

The E4H activity presents a timely opportunity to support the MoH to implement the e-Health Strategy (2016-2021) whose key focus areas are service delivery, research, and e-Learning. In this regard, E4H will focus on harmonising fragmented systems, standardising policies, and practices, and integrating applied research to enhance the evidence base for planning and decision-making. 

Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 key achievements include the following: 

  • Recruitment of Zambia office staff of 21 persons and identification and preparation of office space. 
  • Award of three subcontracts: Health Information Systems Program–South Africa (HISP-SA); Health Information Systems Program–Zambia (HISP-ZM); and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) to support specific interventions under objectives 1 and 3. 
  • Weekly coordination calls with the USAID/Zambia contracting officer representative (COR) and Alternate-COR and periodic virtual meetings with Health Office technical divisions (malaria, social protection, health systems strengthening, HIV/AIDS, TB, and family health). 
  • Submission of the E4H work plan and Activity Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Plan (AMELP) and quarterly progress reports. 
  • Active stakeholder coordination with the MoH Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and ICT Directorates, national and subnational health program managers, the Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI), and the National Malaria Elimination Program (NMEP). 
  • Design of an organisational capacity assessment tool that will inform capacity development planning to enable HISP-ZM, a nascent Zambian entity, to continue to provide HMIS support to the MoH after project end. 
  • HMIS Rapid Assessment conducted and additional related deliverables submitted as follows: Work Plan to implement the Final Rapid Assessment recommendations; Pre-Service Assessment Report; In-Service Training Gap Analysis Report; Gaps of health sector staff capacity in HMIS management identified from rapid assessment; Interoperability Architectural Framework developed based on assessment; Plan of action to improve DHIS2 database content and Plan to align dashboards and reporting requirements with harmonised indicators. 
  • Development of prototypes for knowledge management databases for BOB and enhanced site visits (ESVs) and for the knowledge management data repository.  
  • Identification of COVID-19 indicators for family health service delivery monitoring. 
  • Analysis and visualisation approach to Presidential Malaria Initiative (PMI) M-DIVE data.  
  • Task team created under Malaria TWG to examine malaria data quality.
  • Support to MoH to revitalise the M&E Technical Working Group (TWG)/Community of Practice (CoP) in which the CoP concept note was presented. 
  • Provincial coordinators recruited and dispatched to four target provinces to support data demand and use at the provincial level.