Strengthening the Performance of Kenya’s Health Information System: Improvements in Data Quality and Use at the County Level


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Author(s): Millar, E.

Year: 2019


Millar, E. (2019). Strengthening the performance of Kenya’s health information system: Improvements in data quality and use at the county level. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: MEASURE Evaluation, University of North Carolina.
Strengthening the Performance of Kenya’s Health Information System: Improvements in Data Quality and Use at the County Level Abstract:

To shed light on how to strengthen HIS to meet the needs of the health sector, particularly by improving data quality and data use available for decision making, we studied the MEASURE Evaluation PIMA (MEval-PIMA) project's efforts to strengthen the organizational, technical, and behavioral components of routine health information systems in Kenya through participatory approaches with the county health management teams (CHMTs). Although the context of this study is specific to Kenya, we aimed to learn from the processes used for HIS strengthening within regional units of the health sector.

In 2014, MEVAL-PIMA undertook an assessment of M&E capacity in CHMTs from 17 counties using the MEVAL-PIMA-developed Monitoring and Evaluation Capacity Assessment Toolkit (MECAT) (https://www.measureevaluation.org/pima/m-e-capacity). The assessment sought to identify the status of behavioral, organizational, and technical capacity in the use of data for programming. Baseline scores were used to identify priorities and inform interventions and to establish a benchmark for measuring progress in project M&E. Shortly after the baseline assessments, changes in funding priorities led MEVAL-PIMA to shift their work to a subset of 10 counties identified as high-priority in the areas of reproductive health, malaria, HIV/AIDS, or a combination of the three.

Because MEVAL-PIMA conducted baseline assessments in 17 counties but then ended up working in only 10 counties, a good opportunity arose to capitalize on these initial investments and study the effect over time in comparison and intervention counties. Thus, this study aimed to assess how MEVAL-PIMA-supported interventions affected changes in data quality and data use compared with the comparison county. 

Filed under: HIS , MEASURE Evaluation PIMA , Capacity Assessment , Kenya , HIS strengthening , Learning Agenda , HISS , MECAT , Monitoring, Evaluation