Background:
The efficient utilisation of increasingly available data for evidence-based, people-centred, prioritised and optimised (for efficient and equitable resource allocation) decision making has become increasingly critical in the fight against Tuberculosis – even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting impact on health services globally.
The application of the People-Centred Framework (PCF) for TB programming approach proved to be a great success in the 10 early adopter countries during the last National Strategic Planning and development and Global Fund grant application round (2021-2023 cycle). Data utilisation and evidence-based programming has significantly improved compared with the previous planning rounds, across countries. The use of holistic evidence allowed country programmes and their key stakeholders to better understand programme gaps and opportunities and formulate more robust and responsive national strategic and sub-national implementation plans. These evidence-based national strategic plans (NSP) seamlessly feed into and align with the new Global Fund NSP based application format. However, one of the major challenges was the fragmented evidence & data sources relating to TB programming
Intervention:
KNCV through a co-creation process with countries developed the PCF DHIS2 Analytics Dashboard. This is a powerful data analytics tool that has been developed as a DHIS2 metadata package. It is designed to facilitate data accessibility and analysis, and to support country ownership and management of data (at national and sub-national levels). The Dashboard serves readily accessible people-centred data in an easy-to-view format, which is available for participatory decision-making and the wider use of consolidated data along the continuum of care for NSP development. It can be integrated into existing country HMIS or used on a cloud-based server.
Results
Zambia and Rwanda have successfully integrated the dashboard into their DHIS2. Zambia now uses the PCF dashboard for their overall program planning with weekly meetings to monitor trends, identify problem areas and discuss solutions. While Rwanda is testing this out for their ongoing Program review ahead of their National Strategic Plan development.
The PCF Dashboard is freely available to countries who want to try this out. You can find a [demo, training materials] on how to deploy and utilise the dashboard for your TB program. Reach out to pcf4tb@kncvtbc.org for more information on how KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation can support you.
