ME&A-Led Team Assists USAID With Analysis of COVID-19 Data From 50 Countries
As part of a broader effort to understand the contributions of USAID and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding toward combating COVID-19 and other global health challenges, the Global Health Evaluation and Learning Support Activity (GH EvaLS) assisted USAID with entering USAID COVID-19 response data from 50 countries into a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) monitoring tool.
During the month of July 2021, the ME&A-led team provided data entry, processing, and quality checking of response data on 10 pillars of pandemic response (e.g. infection prevention and control, laboratories, vaccines, risk communication and community engagement, surveillance, etc.). For each of the 50 countries, this involved 15 quantitative and qualitative questions per each of the 10 pillars’ technical areas as well as two additional open-ended questions.
These data will assess how country health systems to fight COVID-19 are improving in the context of USAID/CDC’s technical assistance since the last data call in November 2020. These data will also assess where gaps remain.
The HHS monitoring tool the GH EvaLS team used is the Data Collation and Integration for Public Health Event Response (DCIPHER) Program. DCIPHER is designed to assist public health experts in disease surveillance and outbreak management for real-time events, such as COVID-19. DCIPHER facilitates the collection and integration of various sources of epidemiological, surveillance, and laboratory data and provides tools for multiple organizations, including CDC and USAID, to investigate and take action.
GH EvaLS provides evaluation, assessment, and learning support for health-related projects and activities at USAID/Washington and USAID Missions. Projects within the USAID Bureau for Global Health’s portfolio support the U.S. Government’s goals to improve global health through preventing child and maternal deaths; controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic; and combating infectious diseases, such as COVID-19. USAID awarded ME&A the GH EvaLS contract in May 2020.