Measuring capacity building.

Capacity building has become central to USAID health sector assistance strategies. Experience suggests that achieving better health outcomes requires both an injection of resources and adequate local capacity to use those resources effectively. Capacity is also critical to sustaining health outcomes and reducing reliance on external assistance two stated objectives of US assistance in the health sector. At the request of the Center for Population Health and Nutrition at USAID The MEASURE Evaluation Project reviewed current knowledge and experience gained from efforts to monitor and evaluate capacity building interventions in the health sector. Written for USAID program managers and project designers the report aims to disseminate the state-of-the-art in measuring the effects of capacity building activities in developing country health systems. The long-term goal of this work is to develop guidelines for field practitioners that reflect "best practices" in designing and assessing capacity building to improve or sustain health and population outcomes. This effort drew upon a wide range of sources in order to develop a definition of capacity building and a conceptual framework for measuring the effects of capacity building and to present details of recent experiences in capacity measurement including key methodological issues such as the role of indicators and indices modes of data collection and assessing trends over time. Sources include the published literature unpublished documents describing efforts to measure the effects of capacity building and informal discussions with practitioners in the field covering both theoretical and practical perspectives. This report was also informed by a two-day meeting on Measuring Capacity Building in Health and Population Programs hosted by the MEASURE Evaluation Project in November 1999. (excerpt)