Quick Links #1: Lessons Learned in the Use of Data

Below you'll find a brief list of just some of the polio communication resources related to data use from The Communication Initiative for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Hi again everyone,

This is the content follow up note my introduction last week.  It focuses on the issue of making better use of data for programme decisions.  This has been a major area of discussion especially in the data rich environments of endemic countries where the problem has become one of data management and use.  The pressing questions of today are around directing the right data to the right people in the right form at the right time.  Below are three examples of resources summarised on The CI that might be of interest.  One focusses on the evolution of data use in the polio programme and how this evolution occurred in response to programme needs, one looks at how data has been used in the polio programme (CI has the summary and I’ve attached the full document to this email in case you can’t access it on the journal) and the final one from PATH that’s not based on polio experience but I believe is relevant on how to build data use into a working culture.  These are only a few, though hopefully useful, examples of what can be found on The CI site and as noted before there also considerable information on the GPEI and UNICEF sites as well.

Lessons Learned in Using Data in Polio Communications - How?

This presentation focuses on implementation and monitoring and explores the global evolution of data-based polio communication within specific countries, especially India and Nigeria.  Some of the key steps discussed are related to the movement from theory to data-informed practice:

• Development of communication guidelines and checklists (including process and outcome indicators) from 2000 onward;

• Training of communication experts and country teams in communication planning and strategy;

• Assessment of needs to improve behaviour change and communication;

• Application of communication and advocacy methods and utilisation of existing channels, media, and data; and

• Support for a cadre of field-based, local communication mobilisers for polio (e.g., the Social Mobilization Network, or SMNet, in India).

Using Data to Guide Action in Polio Health Communications: Experience from the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI)

(Note: Link goes to summary only.  Full article is attached)

Health communication is a priority element of investments and interventions intended to improve personal and public health. But a prevailing focus in health communication on information, education, awareness and knowledge - and their assumed relation to changing behaviour among target individuals or households - can underestimate the complexity of wider ecological conditions that influence and limit individual, household, and even community choices and capacity to choose. Experience from the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) - drawing on evidence from the India and Nigeria country programmes - provides some insights into how the health communication interventions can be strengthened through the adoption of a more holistic ecological model of people and their health-related behaviours analysed in the context of larger social, economic, political, and cultural forces. In particular, polio eradication health communication offers useful lessons in the importance of generating and using data of sufficient quality to enable more ecological analysis - combining and measuring specific communication inputs and epidemiological "outputs."

Defining and Building a Data Use Culture

One of the primary benefits of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is the improved ability to collect, analyse, and use data. But, according to PATH, to do this well and sustainably requires fostering a data use culture: the customs, dispositions, and behaviours of a particular group or organisation to support and encourage the use of evidence, including facts, figures, and statistics, to inform their decision-making. This paper explores two frameworks that PATH has developed to highlight the necessary components of a data use culture - at a national system or country level as well as at organisation, facility, community, or individual levels. Its two case studies feature evidence gathered from data use success stories within and beyond the health sector and how a data use culture influenced their outcomes. Finally, it presents recommendations for how the digital health field can take local, regional, and global action to accelerate the rate at which countries and communities are designing and building their own data use cultures.

Cheers

Chris

For more information see:

CI Polio Network

GPEI Resources

UNICEFs Rhizome C4D site

A note on Quick Links: