IntraHealth Presents at the American Evaluation Association Conference

IntraHealth will offer three presentations at Evaluation 2009: Context and Evaluation, in Orlando, FL, USA, on November 14.  Sponsored by the American Evaluation Association, the conference offers 655 sessions and 50 workshops on the relationship of context and evaluation methods, dissemination of findings, and producing findings that enlighten and inform decision makers.

Linda Fogarty, seconded from Jhpiego to IntraHealth as Results and Knowledge Management Director for the Capacity Project, will offer two presentations on Saturday, in room Suwannee 11.  At 10:55 am Fogarty will present, “Indicators for Evaluating Human Resources for Health Capacity-Building” at the session Evaluating Human Resources for Health Systems Strengthening: Experiences from USAID’s Capacity Project. Fogarty will examine how the Capacity Project, working to build the capacity of human resources for health (HRH) systems in low-resource settings, developed and tested indicators and approaches to monitor and evaluate interventions to plan, develop and support the health workforce. She will share how the evaluation indicators were refined to better capture country context factors and strengthen HRH evaluation approaches. Fogarty will also offer recommendations for strengthened HRH evaluation methods and measures.

At the same session Daniel de Vries, Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Manager, will present “The Role of Context in Evaluating Human Resources for Health Systems Strengthening.” Lessons learned from the Capacity Project suggest a central role of context in evaluating HRH intervention outcomes. De Vries will discuss the challenges of measuring evidence from technical work in changing national-level HRH systems due, in part, to a heavy dependence on a country's historical and cultural context and starting point. He will also describe the effects of a participatory approach—required for capacity building—wherein unforeseen intervention directions must be reflected in evaluating success, and the challenges inherent in balancing global evaluation needs with local priorities. De Vries will introduce the HRH context and review how an engaged evaluation practice has dealt with these challenges.

At 11:50 am Fogarty will present “Human Resources Development Promising Practices for a Functional National HIV Monitoring and Evaluation System” in the session HIV Monitoring and Evaluation Practices and Outcomes. Fogarty’s presentation—based on a new compendium of country case studies— will examine how some countries have successfully created functional measurement and evaluation (M&E) systems by planning for, developing and supporting the human resources needed to maintain the systems. She will show how these systems can support an effective, comprehensive response to the HIV epidemic with examples that provide models for donors and countries to overcome all dimensions of this M&E human resources gap.