Global health funders and practitioners are searching for innovative approaches to meeting the health needs of women in developing countries. Core offers new framing for understanding women's life-course journeys toward health and well-being, as well as human-centered design (HCD) led processes to identify and test solutions for meeting women’s sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs in low and middle-income countries. The role of JSI’s Core Evaluation Team is to document and assess Core’s experience and effectiveness, and to feed this evidence into Core’s and the Foundation’s learning strategies.
CORE PROJECT EXTERNAL EVALUATION
Currently, there is little evidence related to the effects of HCD; the learning gained from JSI's study will be an important knowledge sharing contribution as more global health practitioners begin to adopt HCD in their programming. JSI’s external evaluation of Core supports Core’s mission and improves understanding of the role of HCD in shaping solutions related to SRH and well-being, and improving their uptake among women and girls. JSI will document and assess Core’s approaches with the goal of generating learnings that will inform solution development as well as contribute to the existing body of knowledge on SRH. In addition to developing a learning agenda, JSI will measure the added value of utilizing HCD as a method to develop global health solutions.
The year-long project is building new knowledge of critical SRH stages in a women’s life, demonstrating the implications of these for programming, and developing a set of new, tested solutions (or prototypes) for addressing women’s SRH needs, primarily in India, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kenya. Core also aims to increase program strategy team and country office awareness, acceptance and adoption of the Core approach. Finally, the project is building capacity in country-based partners to apply user-centered approaches/HCD in their health policy and practice.
The evaluation methodology was co-designed with M4ID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), and involves varied qualitative and quantitative measurement approaches, combining research techniques emerging from anthropology, ethnography, statistics and epidemiology to examine program processes and effects, explore how change emerges, and why certain factors play a bigger role in driving change than others.
JSI brings its deep experience designing and measuring the impact of health programs and policies. JSI has implemented and evaluated HCD approaches in over 10 countries.
The Core Project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented by M4ID. JSI is the external evaluation partner.
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