Using Evidence

Even the best data will not make a difference unless they are used to support decisions. Translating research into practice requires a multidisciplinary effort backed by formative research with specific target audiences.

IIP conducts this type of research, and provides technical inputs to advocacy efforts on behalf of women and children.  The Lives Saved Tool (LiST) brings together relevant demographic, program and coverage data to generate estimates of the numbers of women and children that are or can be saved by scaling up proven interventions. IIP provides technical inputs on strategy development and program planning to major donors and UN agencies, based on innovative syntheses of available evidence.

Past IIP Projects in Using Evidence:

• Improving coverage measurement for MNCH (global)
• Coverage Technical Working Group of the Countdown to 2015 for Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival (global)
• Estimation of deaths by cause for women, newborns and children under five (global, by country)
• Social autopsies to describe health system failures on the pathway from child health to death (Niger, Malawi, Cameroon, Nigeria recently and more planned)
• A Verbal/Social Autopsy Study to Improve Estimates of the Causes and Determinants of Neonatal and Child Mortality (Nigeria)
• The Lives Saved Tool (global)
• NEP: National Evaluation Platform (Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania)
• Non-communicable Disease and Injuries: Development of a Computer Modeling Program (global)
• Repeat Reproductive Age Mortality Study (RAMOS II) (Afghanistan)
• Estimation of morbidities and etiologies for important neonatal and child conditions such as pneumonia, meningitis and neonatal infections (global)
• Estimation of the pathogen-specific causes of diarrhea among children under 5 years of age and updated estimation of the effectiveness and herd effect of the rotavirus vaccine (global) 
• Estimation of national low birth weight (LBW) rates and trends since 1995 (global, by country)