For immediate useNov. 7, 1997 - No. 830

UNC-CH's Carolina Population Center receives $22.5 million to help USAID

By ALLISON ADAMS
UNC-CH News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded $22.5 million to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Carolina Population Center to help the agency do its job better.

Drs. Amy O. Tsui, center director and professor of maternal and child health, and David K. Guilkey, chair of economics and a center fellow, will lead a project for a new USAID program, “Monitoring and Evaluation to Assess and Use Results.”

The project, known as MEASURE, seeks to improve data collection for evaluating population, health and nutrition programs in 67 countries receiving USAID support and to use that information more productively.

“To build successful programs, strong monitoring and evaluation methods are essential,” Tsui said. “They raise donor and developing country organizations' abilities to judge performance, determine service programs' effectiveness and generate technically sound, but practically useful results for deciding how to allocate scarce resources. Informing strategic use of public funds is a fundamental priority of this new project.”

MEASURE focuses broadly on population and health, emphasizing family planning, maternal and child health and nutrition and preventing AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.

Goals are to improve coordination and partnerships among USAID-assisted programs around the world, strengthen the host-country institutions and ensure that data collected and evaluated are relevant and useful to the various programs.

Nineteen faculty from 11 social and health science departments at UNC-CH will participate in the effort with scientists at Tulane University, Macro International in Beltsville, Md., and John Snow Research and Training Institute in Arlington, Va.

The new project builds on a recently completed, six-year USAID-sponsored evaluation effort also awarded to the Carolina Population Center.

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Note: Tsui can be reached at (919) 966-7482

Carolina Population Center Contact: Allison Adams, (919) 489-1521

News Services Contact: David Williamson, 962-2091