Meet Our Health Data Team
It’s our 20th anniversary
It’s September 20th - we want you to meet an important department and great colleagues. As you know, each month we share interesting facts, behind-the-scene content, and memories with you to celebrate 20 years of Babies and Mothers Alive (BAMA).
BAMA have been working to build strong, healthy communities in Uganda for twenty years. For the past decade our maternal and newborn care program has partnered with district governments (now ten in number!) and the Ministry of Health to dramatically improve the quality of care for 200,000 mothers and babies.What was their goal when they started BAMA 20 years ago? What has been the biggest challenge? And what keeps them going?
We are often asked by our many partners and donors, “How do you know that what BAMA is doing is actually working?”
The answer is simple: high quality and valid health data.
But while the answer may be simple, collecting and analyzing data from over 80 health centers and hospitals is anything but. It requires a dedicated team of data scientists who are in the field everyday ensuring that we have our finger on the pulse of the health delivery system, so that BAMA and our government partners can make evidence-based, fully informed decisions regarding our partnership. When we launched or maternal and newborn health program in 2015, we began with a comprehensive assessment of health data systems. We spent a full year ensuring the validity of health data across a wide array of critical indicators. Our amazing team not only gathers essential data, they have also transformed the district government’s ability to manage its health information systems, creating a long lasting legacy for your investment in BAMA’s work.
For the past ten years, BAMA’s Monitoring and Evaluation team has been led by Richard Kimaka. He is joined by 4 dedicated full-time staff (Sandra Najjuko, Xavier Butayi, Donald Kagulire, Aloysious Kiberu) and 3 hard-working volunteers (Leah Atwine, Samson Kisekka, and Ian Solomon Kisenyi). Every day, they work alongside the government’s Health Information Officers to improve the quality of health data gathered at our partnering health facilities. They perform Data Quality Assessments every quarter. When we began, we found that half the data collected was invalid; we have now consistently achieved over 95% accuracy in our health data. In 2019, Bob Pesner, a brilliant data scientist living in the US, began working with Richard and our team to create an integrated cloud-based data warehouse that allows us access to real-time data aligned with the government Health Information System.
What’s their favorite part about the job? Where do they see BAMA in 5-10 years? Watch this video and find out.
If BAMA’s comprehensive work transforming the quality of reproductive, maternal, and newborn care is a beautiful multi-storied house, then our M&E team is responsible for building the strongest of foundations for our success, high quality, validated health data, which supports informed decision-making for BAMA and our government partners.
Thank you, M&E team, for all you do each and every day for the women and children of Uganda.
You can meet our team and hear about the work they do in their own words here.
Thank you for your generous support. Have a great weekend and join us in toasting to 20 years of BAMA.
In celebration of our 20th anniversary, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram for surprises on the 20th of each month. Last month: Meet our Executive Directors in this video.
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