An international workshop on impact evaluation of population, health, and nutrition programs was conducted in Accra from July 18–29, 2016. This was the third international training program conducted under the banner of the Global Evaluation and Monitoring Network for Health (GEMNet-Health). GEMNet-Health is a network of 9 institutional training partners whose goal is to foster organization growth, collaboration, and South-to-South support for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of health programs globally. The USAID-funded MEASURE Evaluation project serves as the secretariat. GEMNet-Health has identified joint training programs as an important priority for the network, which would promote GEMNet-Health’s profile and its role in the global public health field. While joint trainings could be offered on many M&E topics, training programs requiring specialized or advanced technical skills are particularly well suited for joint trainings, as collaborative trainings facilitate the sourcing of technical expertise from multiple partner sites. This July 2016 impact evaluation workshop is the third joint training opportunity for GEMNet-Health.

MEASURE Evaluation engaged with the School of Public Health at the University of Ghana (UG) to host the workshop in Accra. The workshop drew on technical expertise and experience of faculty members from two GEMNet-Health member institutions and MEASURE Evaluation to prepare and deliver the workshop, with Gustavo Angeles from MEASURE Evaluation and Justice Nonvignon from UG serving as co-technical leads. In keeping with MEASURE Evaluation's capacity building strategy, the design and implementation of the workshop was approached in a way that contributed to strengthening sustainable capacity at all GEMNet-Health partners.

WORKSHOP AGENDA AND INSTRUCTORS
The workshop provided intensive training in the concepts and practice of program impact evaluation. The primary objective of the workshop was to provide professionals responsible for evaluating health programs with appropriate concepts, methods and tools for examining the impact of their programs on health-related behavior and health outcomes. There was intensive training on designs and techniques for evaluating programs. This hands-on training covered the following areas: fundamentals of comprehensive evaluation; the impact evaluation question and main issues to consider for answering the question in a reliable way; steps for designing impact July 2016 Impact Evaluation Workshop 7 evaluations; experimental and non-experimental designs; estimation strategies and techniques for answering the impact evaluation questions; qualitative and mixed method approaches. Practical application of these topics included working in small groups to prepare a complete proposal for evaluating a program’s impact. Exercises and practical applications used the STATA statistical software. While reviewing the statistical techniques, an important objective of the workshop was to develop criteria for choosing the appropriate statistical tool to be able to properly evaluate the impact of programs given different scenarios of data availability and characteristics of the program being evaluated. Another area of emphasis was on the proper interpretation of the statistical results for assessing program impact. Workshop activities included group projects which consisted of designs for evaluating the impact of an ongoing program. On the final day of the workshop, the groups presented their plans and received feedback from other participants and instructors.

A USB drive containing presentations from all workshop sessions and participants’ group work presentations was prepared by UG and distributed to all participants and instructors at the end of the workshop. MEASURE Evaluation has set up a listserv for all workshop participants and instructors to enable everyone to stay in touch with each other easily after the workshop and be a useful resource for getting feedback from the group about evaluation-related issues in their work.

Credit: Measure Evaluation