MEASURE Evaluation in Vietnam

MEASURE Evaluation has provided technical assistance to Vietnam in both HIV and Avian Influenza (AI) related activities. The Project’s HIV work has focused on strengthening the country’s national M&E system as well as facilitating high quality data collection and reporting for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). MEASURE Evaluation has continued its assistance to Vietnam’s Partnership for Avian and Human Influenza (PAHI) in developing a national AI M&E strategy.

In September 2006, Vietnam’s government issued Decision 26, which required medical clinics throughout the country to collect and report data on HIV/AIDS patients and prevention programs. In other words, it created a national M&E framework and system for HIV surveillance. The latest version of the system is referred to as Decision 28, or simply D-28.

MEASURE Evaluation assisted VAAC, the Vietnamese government’s HIV/AIDS strategy program, in implementing the D-28 reporting indicators and national M&E framework, including an online reporting system. The purpose of this assistance has been to improve the quality of data flowing through the national M&E system, and to increase the use of data for program decision making, policy development and advocacy in targeted provinces.

To these ends, the MEASURE Evaluation team helped VAAC and the Ministry of Health conduct numerous training workshops on data management in selected provinces. Trainings spanned four topics—basic M&E, Decision 28 implementation, data management, and data use.

An important outcome of MEASURE Evaluation’s support to national M&E system functions was the establishment of an Excel database to compile and make accessible all national HIV data by program and province. The database has been essential to geographic information system (GIS) activities in Vietnam.

In 2009, PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, launched a newly revised set of required program indicators to be reported by recipients of its funding. The amount of effort required to implement these new “Next Generation Indicators” (NGI), was great. MEASURE Evaluation played a major role in helping Vietnam transition from the old to the new.

MEASURE Evaluation helped adapt the generic PEPFAR guidelines to a Vietnamese context. All of the new PEPFAR indicators were explained in the context of Vietnam’s specific circumstances, and the entire indicator guide was translated from English to Vietnamese. The results of MEASURE Evaluation’s assistance have been clear. By the end of the first year of the second phase, the data quality coming out of Vietnam was better than at the beginning of Phase One.

MEASURE Evaluation also helped develop a PEPFAR data warehouse for Vietnam, which now serves as the primary source of HIV data consumption in the country.

During Phase III, MEASURE Evaluation has continued to provide technical assistance to the Vietnamese government’s Partnership for Avian and Human Influenza in developing an M&E framework and strategy for the national avian influenza program. MEASURE Evaluation has also assisted in developing an assessment framework and standardized assessment tools for a package of interventions implemented by USAID/Vietnam in five different provinces. The assessment framework covers four key components of AI prevention and control—planning and policy, animal health, human health, and behavior change communication. This activity was informed by MEASURE Evaluation’s earlier work in developing the Guide for Monitoring and Evaluating Avian Influenza Programs in Southeast Asia.

MEASURE Evaluation also assisted in drafting USAID Vietnam’s performance management plan (PMP), which builds on the national AI M&E framework. Local stakeholders contributed heavily to the PMP. To facilitate the data collection and access, MEASURE Evaluation has prepared data collection forms and a storage mechanism for PMP data collected.