NEWS

UNC to receive $70 million from USAID, largest social science award in its history

By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has signed a cooperative agreement that will provide the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Carolina Population Center with $70 million over five years for the second phase of its MEASURE Evaluation Project.

With an overall goal of boosting health in developing countries, UNC faculty and staff will seek to improve collection and use of critical health-related information. They will work with four subcontractors -- the Futures Group International Inc., John Snow Inc., Macro International Inc., and Tulane University -- to implement the agreement.

The federal money is the largest such award ever received by the university for social science research.

"The Carolina Population Center is proud to win the MEASURE II award," said Dr. Barbara Entwisle, center director and professor of sociology in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. "An earlier, related effort, Measure I, led to development of tools that caught the interest of the scientific community in refereed journals and that were used right away in the field."

For example, the PLACE methods, developed by UNC faculty and others during MEASURE I, created new approaches to identifying HIV/AIDS prevention programs and have been applied around the world, Entwisle said. The connection between research and its applications is key to the project.

"The MEASURE project really puts UNC on the map with respect to international impact," she said. "Activities are under way in many countries around the globe."

Dr. Sian Curtis, research associate professor of maternal and child health at the UNC School of Public Health, will direct the effort. Deputy directors are Drs. Gustavo Angeles, assistant professor of maternal and child health, and Philip Setel, head of an adult morbidity and mortality project in Tanzania, who will soon join the UNC team.

"The objective of MEASURE Phase II is to improve collection, analysis and presentation of health-related information and to improve its use in planning, policy-making, managing, monitoring and evaluating health and nutrition programs," Curtis said. "To achieve this, MEASURE Phase II will emphasize data demand generation and use, collection and dissemination and will include research and development, field technical assistance and capacity-building components."

The project will operate in about 30 countries and cover the five major areas of USAID health investment -- population health, maternal health, child health, HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases, primarily tuberculosis and malaria, she said. UNC and its partners will work closely with institutions in developing countries as well as non-governmental organizations and international agencies. Those include the United Nations, the World Bank and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development.

"While considerable progress has been made over the last decade in improving monitoring and evaluation systems, evolving international health program priorities mean that new methods and tools are required to meet emerging needs," Curtis said. "In addition, these programs increasingly require good-quality, cost-effective information to make strategic decisions with limited resources.

"The research and development component of MEASURE Phase II will focus on improved data collection tools and monitoring and evaluation methods," the scientist said. "It also will support studies to better understand demand for data and problems with data collection, use and analysis to evaluate specific health programs."

Proposed areas of emphasis include measurement of poverty and equity in health program coverage and outcomes, cost-effectiveness research, impact of care quality on health outcomes, monitoring and evaluation in decentralized health systems and newer data collection options such as vital registration, integrated long-term data collection systems and PLACE, an acronym for "priorities for local AIDS control efforts," she said. An important element of the project will be to translate research and development findings into formats suitable for use by different audiences and to facilitate use of data and tools in the field to improve program management and policy-making.

MEASURE Evaluation Phase II follows on UNC’s successful implementation of MEASURE Evaluation Phase I and the EVALUATION Project, Curtis said.

"The award of Phase II reflects UNC’s strong record of achievement and international leadership in monitoring and evaluation research and its application," she said.

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Note: Entwisle and Curtis can be reached at (919) 966-1713 and 966-1737, respectively.

Contact: David Williamson, (919) 962-8596