How We Measure
FP2020 and Track20 collaborate closely to advance the family planning measurement agenda. Together, they work toward increasing the availability, visibility, quality, and use of family planning data.
FP2020 PERFORMANCE MONITORING & EVIDENCE WORKING GROUP (PME WG)
The FP2020 Performance Monitoring & Evidence Working Group (PME WG) provides technical guidance, analytic expertise, intellectual stewardship, and quality control for the FP2020 measurement and learning agenda. This includes harmonization and alignment of indicators and methodologies among partners, platforms, and frameworks, and ongoing assessment of the FP2020 Core Indicators to ensure they provide useful information and that any necessary adjustments are made. The group is comprised of demographers, researchers, statisticians, and other technical experts, and is supported by the FP2020 Secretariat’s Data & Performance Management (DPM) team.
TRACK20
Track20, a project of Avenir Health, works with FP2020 commitment-making countries to identify, train, and support dedicated family planning monitoring and evaluation (M&E) officers. The M&E officers, who are trained by Track20, are usually technical staff from the country’s Ministry of Health, Office of Population, or other relevant office, and act as point persons for family planning data. Track20 is working with M&E officers in 35 FP2020 commitment making countries.
M&E officers’ day-to-day activities vary according to country needs—ranging from producing subnational estimates of key family planning indicators to providing M&E support for costed implementation plans (CIPs)—but in all countries, M&E officers liaise with country partners, encouraging the use of quality data, new methodologies, and tools for improved family planning programming and policy decision making.
As part of this effort, M&E officers are engaged in producing data for and organizing annual data consensus workshops led by the government. These workshops provide a platform for the government and partners to review available data, discuss data quality, produce annual estimates of the FP2020 Core Indicators, and assess progress toward a country’s FP2020 goal. Data consensus workshops help ensure that annual monitoring is country-driven and promote transparency about the data and methodologies used in-country and internationally.
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DEVELOPING ANNUAL ESTIMATES OF FP2020'S CORE INDICATORS
Traditionally countries have relied on estimates for mCPR and unmet need that are taken from population-based surveys, such as the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS). Most countries wait several years between surveys to assess the impact of their efforts. FP2020 aims to produce annual estimates of progress, and to do so Track20 has developed methods to take advantage of all available nationally representative surveys to develop annual estimates of FP2020’s Core Indicators. In several countries, more rapid surveys as well as regularly collected service statistics from the health sector are providing new data on which to base these estimates. The figure below illustrates the process each year of developing annual estimates for the FP2020 Progress Report.
One new source of survey data comes from Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020), which is working in 10 FP2020 commitment-making countries.15 PMA2020 uses mobile technology to collect rapid-turnaround survey data on key family planning indicators at individual, household, and facility levels. Partnering with local universities and research organizations, PMA2020 builds local capacity to train and deploy a cadre of resident female enumerators who conduct the surveys using smart phones every six months to a year. The project is providing unprecedented frequency of data in select FP2020 countries.
