Improving the Measurement of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality in Humanitarian Settings Lab

What are the data problems that this Lab is working to solve?

Health program delivery and its measurement in conflict-affected and humanitarian settings is difficult to assess to ensure accountability. There is a minimum set of process measures but they are of unverified quality, especially depending on type of conflict. Access for data collection to most affected populations is complicated due to ongoing security issues, which often disrupt routine data collection.

Logistical and monetary costs of traditional data collection methodologies can significantly increase due to the added security costs, communications challenges and increased costs of human resources in humanitarian and conflict-affected settings. To streamline data collection and measurement processes, simpler approaches to valid and reliable gender-relevant analyses need to be identified.

Key data issues:

• Data Uptake: Identifying data practices, best data sources, and tools for planning will avoid duplication, reduce waste, and increase uptake of the information at early stages of developmental assistance, including investment planning stages.
• Strengthen Data Capacity: Standardize and simplify stakeholders’ capacity, including the next generation, in order to: select indicators; collect data; analyze data; communicate situation analysis and progress using strategic indicators; and, use data and indicators effectively.
• Expanding Health: Gender-relevant outcomes are influenced by a complex web of actors and issues that stretch beyond the health sector. Exploring indicators from multiple sources of data that are not traditionally assessed by the health sector can facilitate complementary gender equality change affecting the social determinants of health (e.g. education).

How are partners navigating this innovation?

• Building on expertise: This lab is leveraging a rich humanitarian programmatic perspective (from the Canadian Red Cross) to develop feasible adaptive tools for implementation. They’re working with an international network of collaborators and researchers to maximize expertise, utilize mixed methodologies and avoid duplication of efforts.
• Leveraging existing Tools and Databases: Assessing the feasibility of using existing assessment tools, such as the National Evaluation Platform (NEP) in Mali and RADAR tools, and administrative data, including the DHIS-2 national survey platforms.
• Utilizing case studies: Case studies were selected due to differences in the conflict types, geographical characteristics and diverse situations of available data. In the absence of household surveys or reliable administrative data, desk-based case studies that use secondary data from four countries (e.g. Mali, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Somalia) are used to validate methods and tools created.