Category Archives: Data

What works to respond to sexual violence?

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Zainab Bangura, UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Photo: FCO

The new special issue of Global Health Governance has several articles that chart the gaps in human rights and global health governance. I co-authored this one, with Doris Schopper and Julia Epps, on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) indicators used by humanitarian organizations to track interventions that respond to sexual violence in conflict settings. We compared indicators used by leading humanitarian organizations for programs that provide medical care, mental health care/psychosocial support, and legal aid to survivors. Continue reading →

How punitive laws lead to bad HIV data

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My article with William Goedel, John Emerson and Brooke Skartvedt Guven was published in the Journal of the International AIDS Society this weekend. Working with data on laws and HIV from 154 countries over seven years (2007-14), we found that criminalization of same-sex sexuality is associated with implausibly low or absent size estimates of men who have sex with men (MSM) reported by countries to UNAIDS.

Low size estimates may contribute to official denial that MSM exist; to failure to adequately address their needs; and to inflated HIV service coverage reports that paint a false picture of success.

We didn’t use this term in the article, but in my head I’ve been calling this “quantitative deconstruction” — using numbers to peal back the facade of other numbers, revealing the politics that drive what countries report to the UN.

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Models meet reality? TB meets HIV

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A recent letter to the Lancet argues that mathematical modelling on cost-effectiveness of tuberculosis control efforts fail to account for real-world challenges: “Political determinants such as … political disruptions, migration, poverty…which are at the root of existing tuberculosis and emerging anti-tuberculosis drug resistance in the world.”

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Global Fund KPIs: Accountability and the hall of mirrors

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img_0591About two weeks ago, the Global Fund Observer, a newsletter that reports on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, published an article about the Fund’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The article raised concerns about the process of developing the KPIs, citing a letter written by the 10 country and NGO constituencies on the Global Fund Board that implement grants (the “Implementers Group”) to the chairs of the committee that are developing KPI targets.

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In 2017, set global health targets from the ground up

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grand-anse-beach-040117I’m lucky to be starting 2017 in Grenada, a flawlessly beautiful island nation of just 100,000 people. But Grenada, like many countries, has found it hard to gather basic HIV data in a context where same-sex sexuality and sex work are illegal.

You can circle the whole country in a jeep in one sunny afternoon, as a friend and I did last week, and be greeted warmly everywhere. One local friend says that if he gets a flat tire, at least three people he knows will stop to help. But in part because the country is so close-knit and stigma is deep, many people living with HIV remain hidden, unreached and uncounted.

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