PRIME II’s Monitoring and Evaluation Unit furnished evaluation and research methodologies and provided technical assistance to help the Project’s interventions achieve substantive and sustained accomplishments. The M&E unit disseminated PRIME program results, primarily through the publication of technical reports, and conducted special studies to maximize the achievement of those results. The unit also contributed to the conceptual advancement of PRIME’s Responsive Training and Learning and HIV/AIDS Integration with Family Planning technical leadership areas and the Project’s cross-cutting initiatives in gender and adolescent reproductive health.

PRIME’s M&E strategy relied on a matrix of methods and techniques encompassing the different stages and levels of interventions. The stages of an intervention correspond to a systematic sequence of inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes related to project implementation. Typically, inputs are the resources and baseline conditions that exist at the start of a project as measured through a variety of indicators and techniques. Processes and outputs are gauged through the monitoring of activities and their immediate results. Outcomes measure both the effects and the impact of interventions.

Programs may be measured and evaluated at the sector, institutional and individual levels. PRIME II worked frequently at the sector level, helping to update and disseminate policies, guidelines and protocols—often on a nationwide basis—and assisting in efforts to increase the quality and accessibility of health care service delivery. PRIME made significant contributions in the area of community participation and mobilization to improve provider and health system performance, and assessed the sector-level cost implications of selected interventions. At both the sector and institutional levels, PRIME II monitored the degree of institutional strengthening achieved during interventions and measured outputs and outcomes through the creation and application of capacity building tools and the Project’s Performance Monitoring Plan (PMP). The PMP was based on 32 indicators that encapsulated the Project’s strategic objectives and intermediate-results framework.

PRIME II developed tools to measure the competency of trainers, the quality of training events and the immediate outputs of training. The Project also used frameworks to gauge the performance of providers, the quality of care they deliver and the degree to which their clients are satisfied. To further measure the effects of improved provider performance on clients, PRIME used provider and clinic records to ascertain changes in service accessibility and usage. By including control groups whenever possible in study designs, PRIME also created more rigorous and definitive methods of demonstrating the net effects—and showing the unequivocal results—of interventions.

Summary of Measuring Provider Performance: Challenges and Definitions, technical meeting sponsored by PRIME II/IntraHealth and Measure Evaluation:

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PRIME II Performance Monitoring Plan (80KB)