Importance of Partnerships
By Laurie Werner, Deputy Director, BID Initiative
Dec 2, 2014
Posted in BID Learning Network (BLN), Monitoring & Evaluation, Products
I recently stopped in Geneva on my way home from visiting the BID Initiative teams in Tanzania and Zambia to meet with important stakeholders at Gavi. While the BID Initiative work primarily focuses on activities in Sub-Saharan Africa through the BID Learning Network (BLN) and in our demonstration countries; we are also building partnerships with global and bi-lateral agencies like Gavi, WHO, UNICEF, USAID, and others.
Over the past year, we met with members of these agencies in Geneva, Washington D.C., and New York, to share BID Initiative updates and discuss what’s being done to address data quality and data use throughout the health system in the countries where we work. Representatives from these agencies are actively engaged with our efforts having attended BLN meetings, participated in our Google Group discussions and joined our webinars. We receive enthusiastic support and input each time we share updates with our partners on the approach we are taking to address the challenges at the country level while collaborating with the country Ministries.
During this visit, I met with two groups at Gavi to continue discussing topics from previous meetings and update them on new developments with the initiative.
Supply Chain
I talked with members of Gavi’s Supply Chain team who we are working with on the barcode technology project in Tanzania. They are preparing to visit Tanzania and meet with our team members and other key partners this month to develop a plan to integrate vaccine information into the country’s logistic management software that will help provide a base for potentially scaling the use of barcodes throughout the country.
Monitoring & Evaluation
I was also able to meet with members of the Monitoring & Evaluation team to continue our discussions on their work to address data quality at the global level with other partner agencies and countries. The goal of our ongoing conversations is to ensure that we seek alignment and connection with their work and the work the BID Initiative is doing with countries. This is core to the BID Initiative’s guiding principles, as we want to have a coordinated approach with partners, global agencies, and countries. This will ensure the solutions developed will both address the data quality and data use challenges but also be in line with larger global efforts in order to have long-term sustainability and the ability to replicate to other countries.
We will continue to check in with these teams and others at Gavi as well as our other partner agencies to make sure that we get input from our global partners and to ensure that the BID Initiative work is in harmony with larger global efforts and strategies.