The collaboration with UNICEF ESARO (Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office) has been ongoing since 2018. The project for 2021/2 consisted of 2 parts. Part one was to support various countries with nutrition related aspects. Part 2 was to assist with the refinement of the Bottle Neck Analysis (BNA) app in DHIS2 and look at population data using other denominators
Nutrition data is crucial to informing child development and having the best possible nutrition data for decision making is a pre-requirement for nutrition program managers. The Nutrition work was supported in Ethiopia reviewing data and indicators for additional nutrition information. In Zambia there were two streams, one was to run an online DHIS2 nutrition analysis training, the other was to review the training material that UNICEF Zambia was using for support of district and facility level nutrition staff. In Namibia work was done on dashboards and indicator configuration. Lesotho was supported with a review of their indicators and supported to reconfigure various nutrition indicators and create dashboards.
Population data is needed for estimating coverage of various health service delivery programs. Population data at facility level is often problematic. The attempt to use of sources of population data is crucial to refining facility catchment figures and the resultant coverage rates. Additional indicators, specifically for Immunisation program using service-based denominators was done proving that in the absence of clear facility level catchment populations, there were other ways of calculating important coverage indicators.
The use of GRID3 population figures which calculated how far away communities were staying from health facilities allowed the calculation of indicator coverage based on walking distance. The use of these various indicators, all based on alternate denominators have started a discussion on how to use these indicators and what does each different one tell us. And this has led to more interaction with facility and district teams on planning services and then viewing service delivery.
The Bottle Neck Analysis is an app on DHIS2 that measures various aspects of service delivery and performance. One of the crucial measurements for a comprehensive BNA is generally not available from routine data, this included stockouts, human resource availability and distance from facility. Exploring how to use different indicators to measure different programs was crucial to proving it’s usability.
This collaboration with ESARO has created more opportunities. This includes another project on population modelling based on the current project. Included in this project will be the development of training material and documentation about alternate denominators which will include different population figures.