Monitoring and Evaluation in Public Health

Outcomes are Essential for Successful Initiatives

In the analysis of global health initiatives, outcomes and their associated metrics are essential to understanding the impact that designed outputs have on social, economic, and human wellbeing. Measuring outcomes is becoming increasingly important in the global health field, as it allows for more informed perspectives and a deeper level of understanding about the efficacy of health interventions when compared with intervention outcomes that may be rather ambiguous about the scale of actual/realized impact (i.e. level of distribution vs. actual value of services) — as shown in the module example where the PlayPumps organization distributed over 900 devices, only to find that many were unused or even reduced the community’s accessibility to water resources.

Some organizations often use their output values to extrapolate theoretical outcomes for their projects — with the actual outcomes and impact being unmeasured at the field level. These techniques can lead to inaccurate descriptions of the success and effectiveness of an…