In the 2021 operation plan adopted by Uganda, the Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Support (METS) Program of Makerere University School of Public Health took up the role of Lead PEPFAR Strategic Information (SI) mechanism. To prepare the MakSPH-METS team to harness this role, a one-day meeting aimed at orienting the team in National and PEPFAR reporting requirements was held at Golf Course Hotel, Kampala.
It was expected that the orientation would enhance the team’s capacities to support the generation of quality National and PEPFAR Reports.
The team came up with key strategies to ensure the program steps up to perform the roles expected of it.
These strategies included the following
- Ensuring that each program area and its cluster of MER 2.6 indicators had a pivotal focal person dedicated to making timely and appropriate responses as would be required by the PEPFAR and National teams;
- Creating a central repository of historical data for each program area from which reports could be generated and it could act as a reference point for both Ministry of Health and PEPFAR partners;
- Automation of the download functions for HTS and VL indicators spearheaded by the Data Science and Informatics team;
- Cascade tracker training to the IPs who should be in position to train lower levels and ensure improved data quality and use;
- Documentation of the Standard Operating Procedures and to make them accessible to interested parties to ensure cleaner data
- The team also identified the need for regular check-in meetings to monitor progress on how the program is performing in the execution of this key role; subsequently a follow-on meeting was scheduled for 15th April 2022.
It was agreed to prioritize timely reporting, ensure METS representation on all technical working groups that handle Strategic Information, and to realign the program to meet the needs of all stakeholders.
