Evaluation use within a humanitarian non-governmental organization’s health care user-fee exemption program in West Africa
Evaluation of humanitarian action (EHA) is increasingly deployed as a means to enhance accountability, transparency, and efficiency of humanitarian programs aimed at reducing health inequities and promoting global health. EHA has become a vital tool for program stakeholders, funding agencies, and policy-makers seeking to render practice and decision-making more evidence-based. However, considerable uncertainty remains about evaluation use (EU), as EHA is frequently conducted without being used. Moreover, conditions that influence EU vary across contexts and their applicability in humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) remains unclear. Program evaluators, stakeholders, and policy-makers in humanitarian contexts have little guidance to support long-term EU, given that few studies have documented EU and its conditions over time. The aim of the present qualitative thesis is to shed light on these issues by documenting EU and the conditions influencing it over a 29-month period within an evaluation strategy embedded into a humanitarian NGO’s health care user fee exemption program. To facilitate access to care, the exemption program subsidized the health service fees of mothers, children under five, and indigents in health districts of Niger and Burkina Faso—West African Sahel regions where food crises and poverty have engendered high rates of malnutrition, morbidity, and mortality. Initial evaluation of the exemption program in Niger led to development of the evaluation strategy subsequently integrated into the same program developed in 2008 in Burkina Faso. The thesis consists of three articles. The first presents an evaluability assessment (EA), a preliminary step undertaken to determine whether an EU evaluation was feasible. Results showed the evaluation strategy’s logic was coherent and plausible, data was accessible, and evaluation strategy stakeholders deemed an EU study to be useful. The second article documents how stakeholders engaged in EU and how it served them and advanced the NGO’s mission. Results showed that stakeholders used findings instrumentally, conceptually, and persuasively, but used evaluation processes only instrumentally and conceptually. The third article identifies the conditions stakeholders saw as influencing EU over time. Key influential conditions were users’ attitudes toward evaluation, stakeholders’ interactions and communications, and evaluators’ skill in producing and sharing evaluation-based knowledge tailored to users’ needs. This thesis furthers knowledge on EU in the humanitarian action context and provides practical recommendations for stakeholders of NGOs.
Program evaluation Evaluation use/utilization Knowledge transfer Non-governmental organization (NGO) Humanitarian Burkina Faso (West Africa) User fee exemption Equity of access to health care Global health