Projects — Cooper / Smith

We USE HARD DATA TO IMPROVE THE EFFICIENCY & EFFECTIVENESS OF DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS WorldWide

Our Flagship Projects

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Our Work

  • Country: Kenya

    Funder: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    Project start date: 2019

    Significant strides have been made to improve supply chain outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. New technology and systems, such as bar codes, bar code readers, and electronic logistic management information systems (LMIS), have been introduced in many countries, and the bulk of technical assistance and data-strengthening activities have focused on better tools, training, and technology, primarily for forecasting, inventory, and central planning. These technologies, however, have not solved all supply chain challenges. Outcomes remain suboptimal in many areas and studies have shown that even with complete information, the best decision is often not made by supply chain workers.  

    To meet this challenge, we are conducting formative research in Kenya to understand the behaviors, motivations, relationships of health care workers, and barriers around supply chain data tracking, management, and use.

    Resources:

  • Country: Multi-Country 

    Funder: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    Partners: Global Financing Facility, The Global Fund, WHO, Gavi the Vaccine Alliance 

    Project start date: 2019

    Most countries do not know the totality of health resources they have available in a given year. Total budgets, expenditures, and how these expenditures translate to health gains - are often unknown.

    Thanks to funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank's Global Financing Facility (GFF) and a collaboration with The Global Fund, WHO, and GAVI, we are aiming to strengthen country-owned, real-time, health financial resource tracking tools/platforms. Through this work, we conducted a deep dive into Malawi, Liberia, and Rwanda's current health financing systems, looking at their existing capabilities; documenting minimum information system capabilities and architecture, as well as missing or common gaps. We are also providing a series of recommendations to the global community on ways that we can better align global technical availability to country needs.

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  • Funder: Pro-bono

    Project start date: 2020

    As COVID-19 wears on, more data emerges about the pandemic response and policymakers face pressing questions about how to allocate foreign aid for COVID-19. Is it going to the right places? Are resources aligned to need?

    With this pro-bono effort, we wanted to make data accessible for policymakers as they make decisions on where additional resources may be needed. We created a set of dashboards to display a range of financial and epidemiological data within simple and intuitive data visualizations, embedded in an easy-to-use website format.  

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  • Funder: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    Partner: PATH

    Project start date: 2020

    PATH and Cooper/Smith are documenting and sharing findings from five countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania, that are improving the use of their health data in decision-making under the Data Use Acceleration & Learning (DUAL) project. These five countries received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under the Data Use Partnership. The Foundation has asked PATH and Cooper/Smith to better understand, document, and share what has worked in improving the digital systems in these countries and their use of health data, as well as areas for improvements. We will share these learnings with governments, implementers, policymakers, and funders to better align financing, normative guidance, and programmatic approaches.

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  • Country: Malawi 

    Funder: USAID

    Fiscal Partner: PATH

    Project start date: 2021

    Beginning in Malawi, we are supporting the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition as they expand the Global Family Planning Visibility and Analytics Network (GFP-VAN) to initiate automated linkages with local electronic logistics management information systems. Governments and global procurers need time-sensitive, accurate visibility into supply chains to better estimate need and meet demands. This means facilitating access to planned orders, having information on shipment progress, and understanding country level inventory. We are working with the Government of Malawi to integrate one of their logistics management systems with this global network. Our aim is for key users to have access to information flowing to and from this global network, allowing for better decision-making around commodities.

     

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  • Country: Malawi

    Funder: The Global Fund

    Project start date: 2016

    What does it take to get to a unified system for monitoring and evaluation of health programs? Most donors, including The Global Fund, are looking to optimize their health investments in partner countries as needs increase and global health investments plateau. Optimizing programs means employing high-quality and relevant data to plan programs that will have maximal returns on health benefits. Having the best data means investing in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems that are efficient, well-coordinated, easily accessible, and promote a culture of data use at all levels.

    We developed a report that discusses gaps in performance and limitations of M&E systems in Malawi, reviewing barriers to data access and use, barriers to systems integration, and recommendations to address the principal gaps and barriers. The analysis brings together findings from previous assessments and maps the flow of data for HIV, TB, and malaria programs in Malawi.

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  • Country: Thailand 

    Funder: USAID

    Partners: Chemonics, Ministry of Health, Thailand

    Project start date: 2018

    In Thailand, we supported Chemonics under GHSC-PSM and the Bureau of Vector Borne Disease (BVBD) within the Thai Ministry of Health to assess their malaria logistics management information system (LMIS). We carried out several activities: 1) an inventory and capability analysis of major supply chain information systems, 2) an exercise validating data flows, reporting processes, procurement and approval processes, as well as roles and responsibilities within the health supply chain.

    We also assessed opportunities for interoperability and data exchange across information systems, documenting user perspectives and requirements for an LMIS and identifying current gaps, data needs, and system requirements. We then developed recommendations and created an overarching roadmap for adopting a standardized LMIS for the Thai Ministry of Health.

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  • Country: Indonesia

    Funder: International Medical Corps

    Partners: Dompet Dhuafa, Rumah Zakat

    Project start date: 2020

    In Indonesia, we are training two national NGOs in Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning. Funded by the USAID Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, and in collaboration with International Medical Corps (IMC), we are working to better prepare these NGOs to engage with the International Humanitarian Architecture in their role leading local humanitarian response efforts.

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  • Country: Malawi

    Funder: USAID

    Partner: Catholic Relief Services

    Project start date: 2018

    With the increasing severity of weather-related shocks threatening food security, there is demand for a comprehensive protocol to monitor and evaluate resilience in the context of development. Launched as a collaboration jointly conceptualized by the monitoring, evaluation and learning unit (MEAL) within the Southern African Regional Office (SARO) of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, we worked to conduct a proof-of-concept study for resilience measurement that would make progress toward meeting this need.

  • Country: Multi-Country

    Funder: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    Partner: Georgetown University

    Project start date: 2020

    Novel data (such as call detail records and social media platforms) provide insights into people's behavior, movement, relationships, preferences, attitudes, and beliefs. These insights can potentially help low-income countries more optimally allocate resources and public services. There are, however, risks and ethical issues inherent in capturing, storing, and using these data. 

    In partnership with Georgetown University, we convened a panel of experts (bioethicists, information and data protection lawyers, computer and data scientists, IT professionals, health economists, and HIV advocates) to advise and make recommendations on issues such as ethics, security, and privacy. These recommendations will be shared with local and global policymakers and implementers.

    Resources: Resources will be posted as they come available.

     

  • Country: Malawi

    Funder: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

     

    Partners: Ministry of Health, Malawi., Compelling Works, Luke International

    Project start date: 2020

    In Malawi, we are working with the Ministry of Health on a pilot to develop a software platform that provides the viral load test results via SMS to people living with HIV (PLHIV). This information should help PLHIV better engage in their own care and achieve (and maintain) long-term viral suppression. We are also leveraging the national health data architecture and working hand-in-hand with the Ministry of Health's Digital Health Division. As the first direct-to-patient communication channel in Malawi, we hope this platform can expand to other MOH programs to improve communication and continuity of care. 

    Resources: SMS-VLRR Project Page

  • Country: Nigeria

    Funder: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    Partner: African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET)

    Project start date: 2020

    The Strengthening Data Quality to Improve Immunization and Primary Health Care (PHC) Program Performance Formative Research project uses a human centered design study approach to explore the behavioral and other factors that lead to poor PHC data quality.

    The study identifies the drivers of data quality at Nigerian health facility and local government area (LGA) levels. The study also documents stakeholder perceptions and attitudes regarding data quality and identifies the motivators and barriers to improving data quality and availability. 

    We are providing technical support to AFENET, a Nigeria based non-profit, to develop a human centered design research approach, methodology, data collection, and analysis.

    Resources: Resources will be posted as they come available.

  • Country: Malawi 

    Funder: UNICEF

    Partner: Ministry of Health, Malawi 

    Project start date: 2020

     Working in coordination with the Malawi Ministry of Health, we built and are maintaining a dynamic epidemiological and risk model for COVID-19 in Malawi. Our dashboard allows users to choose different policy levers (e.g., masking, physical distancing) and see how these policy decisions affect rates of infection, hospitalizations, ICU stays, and deaths.  The model is parametrized with the latest data available, geographically granular, and computationally complex. The real-time, user-driven interface is the first of its kind in low- and middle-income countries and improves accessibility to and use of modeled results by policy makers.

Publications & Reports

  • Health workers are at the heart of any health system. However, many countries do not have accurate counts of the workforce and their distribution by region, cadre, and sector. This data gap hampers effective health system functioning.

    In 2020, we supported Intrahealth International and Vital Wave to conduct an assessment looking at the Human Resources for Health (HRH) information ecosystem across 20 countries, with “deep-dives” in three countries: Burkina Faso, Mozambique, and Uganda. The deep dive research focused on how the health workforce information ecosystems were working in these countries, mapping the administrative processes and data flows for recruitment and deployment, salary payments, and performance management, and also mapping how information flowed across different levels of the health system to identify bottlenecks.

    Resources

  • The COVID-19 global pandemic has had considerable health impact, including in sub-Saharan Africa. In Malawi, a resource limited setting in Africa, gaining access to data to inform the COVID-19 response is challenging.

    Our article, which focuses on the use of aggregated mobile phone data to better understand population mobility and connectedness – a key indicator of COVID-19 response - is in the final stages of publication in Data and Policy Magazine a publication of Cambridge University Press

    A link to the article will be published here once available.

     

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread disruptions including to health services. In the early response to the pandemic many countries restricted population movements and some health services were suspended or limited. In late 2020 and early 2021 some countries re-imposed restrictions. Health authorities need to balance the potential harms of additional SARS-CoV-2 transmission due to contacts associated with health services against the benefits of those services, including fewer new HIV infections and deaths.

    This paper, published on medRxiv which references our latest research developed with the HIV Modeling Consortium and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation examines these trade-offs for select HIV services. 

    Read the full article on medRxiv

  • Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 transmission has been instrumental in the global pandemic, particularly to governments in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where empirical data and surveillance is limited. Simulations can be used to understand disease trajectory and impacts of policy options at little additional cost.

    In this article, we describe an automated, open-source, and web-based dashboard designed to empower Malawi government officials to understand the ramifications of certain policy interventions from a mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission.

    The article is presently being reviewed and will be published on medRxiv in the coming months.

     

    A link to the article will be published here once available.