Overview

We want to provide you some information about our course “Measuring and Modeling Impact in evaluations”. The purpose of this course is to give you a better understanding of different measures of impact that could be used in the evaluation of a program in the areas of maternal and child health and nutrition. For each of the measures presented, we will discuss current sources of data you might draw on as well as describe the methods that can be used to measure these. When we describe the methods, we also try to identify the strengths and weakness of the methods as well as their suitably for use in an evaluation. The course also discusses how modeling can be used in evaluations as either a replacement for measuring impact or to supplement measured impact. The last two lessons in this course focus on giving you an introduction and training on how the Lives Saved Tool (LiST) works and how to use it. This model can be used to estimate most – if not all – of the impact measures we describe in the course and can be an important part of both planning and estimating impact in an evaluation of a large-scale program. While this course is self-contained, it is also linked to other courses on evaluation. We developed this course for public health program managers and evaluators and assume the students in the course will have a background in public health with a focus on maternal and child health in low- and middle-income countries. The development of this course was supported by a grant from Government Affairs Canada (GAC) for the Real Accountability, Data Analysis for Results (RADAR) project.

Syllabus

Introduction to Measuring and Modeling Impact

This module welcomes students to the Measuring and Modeling Impact course presented by faculty from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The module also introduces faculty and provides an overview of impact measures.

Measuring Mortality and Maternal Mortality

This module will first cover a broad set of issues that cut across all types of mortality, including under-five, maternal and neonatal. It then has lessons and readings that focus on understanding maternal mortality, data sources for maternal mortality and approaches to measurement.

Measuring and Modelling Mortality in Children

This module will introduce you to the major indicators related to deaths among children that could be used as a measure of impact. For each of these indicators we describe common sources of these indicators as well as methods used to measure or model these indicators .

Nutrition

In this model we provide and overview of common impact measures related to nutrition. For each of these indicators we describe common sources and the methods that can be used to collect these indicators in an evaluation.

Other Impact Measures

In this module we review other categories of possible impact measures, including morbidity, long-term consequences of programs and birth outcomes. For each category of additional impact measures we review the major indicators, possible sources of these indicators as well a a quick overview of methods that could be used to collect them.

Modeling Impact

In this module, we introduce the Lives Saved Tool (LiST) which is a mathematical modeling tool that can be used to model the impact of maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition. We review basic concepts, data sources, and review how the software itself works as well.

Topics In LiST

In this module, we discuss specific topics in LiST including how nutrition is modelled in LiST, how maternal and child mortality are modelled in LiST, and how subnational modelling is handled in LiST. We conclude by reviewing some additional tools that are relevant to LiST.