The goal of Track20 is to transform the current family planning (FP) monitoring environment, which relies heavily on large national household surveys, to one which uses new tools and estimation methodologies that expand usage of existing country produced data, specifically service statistics (HMIS). Historically, FP service statistics have been underutilized and undervalued in program monitoring. Track20's work to elevate country-owned routine data has been expansive from the start, with the project working at both the global and country levels to promote service statistics as a critical monitoring input and strengthen HMIS systems.
Track20's HMIS innovations, including the DHIS2 module FP DataPro, have enhanced countries' ability to visualize, analyze, improve, and share data across all levels of their health system – resulting in efficiencies and improved data quality and use.
Track20's in-depth understanding of the data available in countries, how it is used, and how it can be better leveraged, has led to the development of new standardized indicators that have been widely adopted by the FP community to advance measurement and monitoring, including the service-statistics-base Estimated Modern Use (EMU) indicator.
With the introduction of EMU, countries increasingly saw the value of their own service statistics as a means to track population-level changes in trends between surveys at the national and subnational level. A critical aspect of the Service Statistics to EMU (SS-to-EMU) tool used to calculate EMU is a comprehensive data quality review process that has improved the quality of countries' routine data, and therefore increased users trust in the data. In addition, adding EMU as an input into Track20's widely used Family Planning Estimation Tool (FPET) strengthens the modeled estimates of mCPR, unmet need, and demand satisfied. Beyond its benefit to country monitoring, EMU can also be used as a cross-country, standardized, international FP indicator.
EMU has been adopted for routine reporting by:
- FP2030
- Ouagadougou Partnership
- Countdown to 2030
- GFF
- USAID projects
- Country governments
Track20 M&E Officers work hard to improve the quality of their routine data and increase stakeholders' confidence in its reliability. The data quality review (DQR) process incorporated in the SS-to-EMU tool has helped M&E Officers quickly identify outliers and understand trends so they can follow-up with facilities to verify or correct data. In countries where Track20's FP DataPro app has been downloaded, this DQR process is embedded directly into DHIS2 and is available at all levels of the health system.
FP DataPro is the first DHIS2 app to be developed for family planning (FP) and also includes maternal and newborn health (MNH) and child health. This app serves as a “one-stop shop” within DHIS2 for data quality review, automated analysis, and intuitive data visualizations to support program monitoring and decision making. FP DataPro provides users with the tools to interpret performance, follow up on data anomalies, identify areas for improvement, and share insights and standardized reports with colleagues at all levels of the health system quickly and easily.
HMIS systems hold a wealth of information. Track20 works to find innovative ways to get more information out of the data available and in some countries have been successful in increasing the amount of private sector data available in DHIS2 – providing a more comprehensive view of FP service availability and quality.