Introducing our Vaccine Data CoLab Portfolio of grants in Uganda: an interconnected approach to unlocking vaccine data-for-decision-making

Since our stakeholder workshop held in Kampala at the end of January 2023, working with the Infectious Diseases Institute, we have achieved a lot! We have identified our investment priorities, ran a competitive call for proposals, made grant funding awards, kicked off projects with grantees, and began implementing impactful projects. Throughout all of these activities and achievements we have engaged closely with key MoH stakeholders, most notably the Uganda National Extended Programme on Immunisation (UNEPI).

Attendees at the Stakeholder workshop in January 2023.

Today, we’re introducing our three projects in Uganda who we have been working with since June. They form an interconnected portfolio of interventions working to increase the access, reliability and value of vaccine data.

Uganda recognises the importance of immunisation as a cost-effective public health intervention to prevent morbidity and mortality due to vaccine-preventable diseases. Through UNEPI, Uganda aims to formulate policies, guidelines and standards that ensure the availability and uptake of vaccines. We have supported these aims by working with UNEPI to ensure our projects align with its strategy. This has led to significant support from the agency for our work.

“We appreciate the value addition that these interventions will bring to the programme” Dr Micheal Baganizi, Program Director, UNEPI

The Vaccine Data CoLab is supporting Uganda’s vision by strengthening the role of hyperlocal data systems in driving decision makers to use data to design and deliver more targeted vaccine programmes.

Investing in local expertise

The Vaccine Data CoLab is funding 3 projects from 3 organisations to respond to the following opportunity areas we identified as investment priorities:

• Vaccine Data Accessibility How can we design and create the policies and systems needed to allow access to vaccine and health data for those who need it?
• More reliable data How can we improve the quality and useability of data so that it is actionable for implementers and policymakers?
• Making vaccine data valued within the system How can we shift mindsets and create incentives so that high quality data is highly valued and in-demand at all stages of the data value chain?

To address these areas, the Vaccine Data CoLab has invested in projects run by 3 organisations to implement 3 complementary approaches to increase data visibility, improve data quality and enable data sharing:

• Adroit Biomedical and BioEntrepreneurship Research Services (ABBRS) is a research organisation founded by four seasoned Ugandan scientists that aims to foster collaborations to advance policies that reduce inequality in biomedicine. Recognising that the policy landscape may enable or inhibit access to data, ABBRS are analysing the current data protection and management policies to identify gaps and bottlenecks hindering data sharing among key stakeholders. At the end of their project they will produce a Policy Brief with recommendations on facilitating data sharing, while ensuring provisions for data protection and privacy are robust.
• Medici l’Africa CUAMM, is an Italian NGO engaged in the health sector in eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa including Uganda. CUAMM has been supporting district community health systems strengthening and was pivotal in Uganda’s response to COVID-19 in the districts of Karamoja. In this project, CUAMM is working with UNEPI to train district-based mentors to mentor, supervise and motivate health workers in facilities in the 3 districts in southern Karamoja to collect, store, analyse, report and utilise reliable vaccine data to improve immunisation data’s reliability for decision making. In addition, CUAMM is providing capacity support to facilities that are piloting Smart Paper Technology (SPT) in Moroto.

The UNEPI programme manager feedback in an early engagement that he appreciated the project’s alignment with UNEPI objectives and lauded the ‘last mile’ focus of the project, noting that if well implemented it will improve vaccine service delivery.

• HISP Uganda is a renowned organisation in Uganda made up of informaticians and public health professionals dedicated to strengthening the collaborative actions between learning and information systems. With Vaccine Data CoLab funding, HISP is working to improve data accessibility and its value in the health system by creating a data visualisation dashboard linking data from various sources onto a unified analytics platform. End-users of the dashboard and government stakeholders have continually fed into the design of the dashboard — improving usability and increasing chances of sustainability and uptake in the post-grant period.

Moving towards a better future

We are optimistic that our portfolio of investments in Uganda will help us reach our better future objective of “the vaccine data health system in Uganda is known for having actionable, high quality and targeted data at all levels of the system that is widely available and accessible for decision makers.” by the year 2040.

Our optimism is due to 3 main factors:

1. The energy and collaborative attitude of our grantees. Each project has committed to working together and sharing learnings along the way. CUAMM and HISP are exploring whether HISP’s dashboard can be integrated into CUAMM’s mentoring activities in Karamoja.
2. Buy-in and support from UNEPI and others. We have regular coordination meetings with UNEPI and other stakeholders in Uganda and from these, we have obtained a lot of support for our work. UNEPI, with support from UNICEF, donated 16 laptops and smart paper technology scanners to CUAMM’s project — meaning more facilities can benefit from SPT capacity building. We are optimistic that the relationships built will result in the Vaccine Data CoLab projects achieving scale and sustainability through continued government support.
3. Our grants are proving to be rich sources of learning. We are capturing some fascinating lessons largely thanks to the work of the Infectious Disease Institute — our fellow CoLabber! We plan to package this learning and disseminate it far and wide so that our investments in Uganda have lasting positive impacts on the vaccine data health system.