The Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Support (METS) Program

The METS program is a collaboration between Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). METS is aimed at establishing coordinated and effective national and district systems for management of strategic information for HIV response. The program supports health systems strengthening through four programs areas, namely; Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E), District Led Programming (DLP), Case Based Surveillance (CBS) and Health Management Information Systems (HMIS). The program also offers technical support to PEPFAR implementing partners and district bio-statisticians to ensure that data for PEPFAR and country reporting is timely and of good quality.

The program’s mission is to strengthen health systems in Uganda through innovative capacity building approaches for an evidence-based and effective HIV response.

Project achievements

Monitoring and Evaluation

1. METS conducted a short M&E fellowship program with the aim of enhancing the M&E capacity of bio-statisticians and HMIS focal persons from 48 CDC supported districts. These cadres were trained to be able to report consistent, accurate, timely, complete and quality data in their respective districts.
2. METS supported strengthening of quality improvement along the Continuum of Response (COR) in 48 CDC supported districts. The COR includes provision of essential prevention (HTS, PMTCT, VMMC), care support and treatment services (ART).  Quality improvement is supported through conducting trainings in CQI, mentorship and coaching sessions for health facility staff. This is aimed at improving health outcomes through decreasing HIV transmission, slowing down disease progress and improving the sense of wellbeing.

METS also gives technical support in partner reporting under the M&E component and below are some of the achievements;

1. Supporting of CDC implementing partners through routine data extraction and sharing of quality checks. Quality checks ensure that data reported is correct.
2. Conducts routine partner meetings aimed at ensuring partners understand PEPFAR reporting requirements including indicator interpretation, mapping and reporting through various systems both at national and subnational levels.

District Led Planning

1. Conducted the Governance, Leadership and Management Fellowship program for DHOs, HIV focal persons and heads of health sub-districts.
2. Support was given to districts to produce strategic reports.
3. METS offered technical support towards the implementation of the DREAMS program.
4. Quality improvement and quality assessment tools were developed and this was used to conduct a quality assessment in some districts like Mubende.
5. METS developed a computerized system dubbed the Uganda DREAMS Tracking System (UDTS) program as a way of improving monitoring and reporting of the national DREAMS program. Information generated from the system is analysed and projected on a user-friendly dashboard that is used by all DREAMS stakeholders.

Case Based Surveillance (CBS)

1. METS has supported the MoH to archive information through the upgrade of an online dashboard, to review the VL monitoring guidelines, the VL training curriculum, the VL SOPS and the overall leadership of M&E for VL. This support has been in form of provision of national level R support for VL monitoring at CPHL, and progress reports to the national team and IPs besides supporting monthly review meetings.

Health Management Information Systems (HMIS)

1. Built the Uganda open MRS Community which currently has 400 active users who include health workers, M&E personnel and MoH officials.
2. Supported the MoH to conduct national DHIS2 training for the armed forces (UPDF), Uganda Prisons and Uganda Police Force) and Kalangala Comprehensive Health Service Program.
3. Supported MoH in customizing, trouble shooting and maintenance of the national Option B+ platform and its online dashboard (dashboard.metsor.ug)
4. Printed and distributed 50 critical national HMIS tools to various PEPFAR IPs. These tools are used to support data capture and reporting at health facilities across the country.
5. The MoH working closely with WHO and CDC piloted and adopted open MRS as a national EMR to manage patient records. This system was updated and rebranded “UgandaEMR” with the collaboration of METS, MakSPH and MoH.
   1. METS has supported MoH to scale out the UgandaEMR to 480 facilities across the country.
   2. METS has also taken the lead in customizing the HMIS forms as well as atomized registers and reports into the Uganda EMR system.
   3. The METS team has also centrally managed the UgandaEMR concept dictionary which reduces duplication of concepts across different UgandaEMR implementations.