Strengthening data availability for community health programming - A review of current practices

Abstract

There is always a fair amount of data collected, analyzed, stored and disseminated in various formats in the national health systems. In most cases, district and national health management teams are tasked by law to generate quality data for planning, budgeting, programmatic decision making and to respond to requests and needs from stakeholders such as donors. Valuable community health data should be ready-to-use at the point of service delivery and ideally at the household and community levels for real time decision making to improve performance and outcomes. Donors need evidence to measure progress towards the achievement of their objectives, and also to advocate for additional resources. The need for community data fluctuates temporally due to environmental, behavioral, economic, social and political factors. Data collection, management and analysis should be timely, constantly updated and tailored to reflect these fluctuations. Findings from multiple demographic and health surveys (DHS) that collated and analyzed large datasets from households, have shown the importance of collecting quality data, improving their availability and dissemination to build awareness of communities about emerging health issues, and to stimulate and increase data utilization for health programming especially in areas or contexts where there is no or little relevant information. We reviewed current community data collection and management practices, analyzed various sources of data, data usage, formats and performance indicators. We noted that community data ownership is key. Communities who generate health information, should be able to use their own data their data for self monitoring, program planning and implementation in collaboration with local health facilities.