MEASURE Awarded More than $35 Million to Improve TB Data

A tuberculosis (TB)-focused program just awarded will provide more than $35 million in new funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for MEASURE Evaluation to strengthen TB data and knowledge sharing worldwide. MEASURE Evaluation is a global health project housed at the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). JSI, a partner on MEASURE Evaluation since 1997, leads health information systems strengthening for the project and supports activities in Bangladesh, Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, and Tanzania to improve health system performance by increasing demand for health information, integrate better tools and data collection practices, strengthen analysis, and most especially, improve the use of data.

Yesterday, as world leaders gathered at the United Nations High-Level Meeting on the Fight to End Tuberculosis, the USAID Administrator Mark Green emphasized eliminating TB as a top priority for the United States Government and announced the launch of the Global Accelerator to End Tuberculosis as USAID’s new TB business model. The Accelerator will catalyze investments across multiple countries and sectors to end the epidemic while building self-reliance. Administrator Green also announced that USAID had initiated the first award of the Accelerator —more than $35 million to UNC for the TB Data, Impact Assessment and Communications Hub (TB DIAH) project.

The project will build upon MEASURE Evaluation’s main USAID award of $232 million over five years (UNC’s largest-ever award). TB DIAH will be implemented from September 2018 to September 2023 with the aim to strengthen TB information systems and to build the capacity of low-resource countries for TB monitoring and evaluation (M&E) on their journey to self-reliance.

MEASURE Evaluation’s strategy for TB DIAH is to provide more accurate and timely data to combat the disease, to share those data widely across all organizations fighting TB, and to establish an information resource repository as a lasting global good. TB DIAH aims to ensure optimal demand for an analysis of TB data and the appropriate use of such information to measure performance and to inform national TB programs and USAID interventions and policies. Through the TB DIAH Associate Award, the capacity of TB decision makers to collect, analyze, and use reliable information to scale up high-quality and sustainable TB services will be strengthened. TB DIAH will be instrumental in establishing and implementing the performance-based measurement system under the new USAID TB business model.

The project director for TB DIAH is Stephanie Mullen, a senior M&E advisor with MEASURE Evaluation at John Snow, Inc. (JSI), one of MEASURE Evaluation’s partner organizations. “We are excited to implement this project in light of the high-level meeting at the United Nations’ 73rd General Assembly about the fight to end TB,” she said. “Increasing the capacity of national TB programs, ministries of health, civil societies, the private sector, and donor communities to collect, analyze, and use TB data to improve detection, quality of care, and best placement of resources is paramount in realizing a world free of TB.”

Jim Thomas, associate professor of epidemiology at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and MEASURE Evaluation’s director, will be the principal investigator for the new TB DIAH award. UNC and JSI will administer the TB DIAH program, with support from two of MEASURE Evaluation’s partners: ICF and Palladium. USAID administers the U.S. foreign assistance program providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 80 countries worldwide.