What can data do for me and how can I best use it? Considerations for using data to design and evaluate digital health interventions

1. Brief Summary The Government of Kenya launched the Big 4 Agenda in 2018 and identified Food Security, Affordable Housing, Manufacturing and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as the areas to drive growth in the country over the next four years. UHC is a component of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under Goal 3, which is to “Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages”. Under this goal, the specific target for UHC is to “Achieve UHC, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all”. Achieving universal health coverage is aimed at guarantying the right to health and reduce extreme poverty. Through the Kenya Ministry of Health (MOH), the Government of Kenya is making a huge investment aimed at ensuring all households have access to affordable and quality healthcare by the year 2022 ahead of the SDG target of 2030. MOH has taken a tax-based approach through which the devolved county governments receive grants from the national treasury to pay for health services offered at no cost to the public. MOH has started the implementation with a pilot phase including four counties – Isiolo, Kisumu, Machakos and Nyeri that were selected for their diversities. Moving towards UHC, especially in the pilot phase, is a dynamic process that requires a solid monitoring and review system to inform policy leaders and decision makers exactly where they are, the areas to focus their efforts and if their actions are making a difference. Monitoring that feeds an ongoing learning process of UHC implementation is thus fundamental to the achievement of UHC objectives. The Kenya MOH developed the UHC framework with indicators and targets for service coverage of health interventions and for the financial protection of all. In order to provide information to policymakers on the implementation process, MOH developed a dashboard to electronically provide current or near real-time data on selected priority indicators. The UHC dashboard will be accessible to both policy makers and implementer at national and county level.

As the amount and quality of health data generated within Sub-Saharan Africa grows, the focus is moving from production to the actualization of the value of the data. The question is thus, how do we obtain actionable information and insights from these resources? The above question should be answered within the context of health being both a regional and global issue. Thus, the continued drive within the continent towards regional cooperation and integration will be important in ensuring the full utilization of these vast health data resources; all geared towards improving health outcomes for populations within the Sub-Saharan region. In a conversation led by USAID’s Regional Action Through Data Program, panelists will share their stories from the front lines of creating sustainable demand for, and utilization of, regional health information. Panelists, representing three different regional data platforms serving countries in Africa (working with regional economic communities), will discuss various approaches utilized in encouraging demand for regional health information by concentrating on both the producers and consumers of the health information; sharing stories of success and failure. This panel discussion will focus on creating a value proposition amongst public and private sector stakeholders at national and regional levels, and thus discuss the attendant strategies to grow and sustain demand for regional health information and actionable insights therefrom. Key themes driving the panel conversation include: • Driving the value of regional data for national ministries of health, • Integration of regional health data into national health information decision-making processes, • Understanding the needs and the benefits to both the producers and consumers of the health information, • Aligning the incentives between the producers and consumers of the health information, • Affordable stakeholder engagement of large regional communities, • A quality data pipeline is paramount to sustainable data demand.

Over 200 projects have been run globally in the last decade using Mobile Network Operator to answer health, agriculture, education and transportation questions to name just a few. Despite the myriad investments in this space, there has not been a consistent process that has been developed so that anyone (e.g. NGO, government) working in development can use these tools effectively each time in their programming. The Digital Impact Alliance has invested with partners (i.e., Cooper Smith, Path, Infosys, Flowminder, OPAL) to demonstrate in a few countries (e.g., Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania) how this can be a repeatable process. The panel will feature and in depth look at how this data has been used for global health in Malawi and will feature Cooper Smith, Infosys, MOH official and DIAL who will talk about this unique partnership and how other NGOs and countries can leverage this process to do the same thing in their country programs. Participants will offer a step by step view of the work they did to build in safeguards for citizen protection and build an on-going partnership that is now moving from the MOH to the National Statistics Office where they will take over data stewardship in 2020. A detailed paper on the work will be available in late July 2019. A video on the work is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=33&v=XB16i9p-XPs