A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD
East African Journal of Applied Health Monitoring & Evaluation: Using Data to Improve the Quality of Services and Programmes.
GEORGE RUTHERFORD1 and ROGER MYRICK1
1Global Health Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
With this first issue, we are very pleased to announce the launch of the East African Journal of Applied Health Monitoring and Evaluation (EAJAHME). The area of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) has become one of increasing global importance given the critical role it plays in improving the quality of services and progrmmes throughout the health sector. Monitoring is the routine tracking of programme performance and evaluation is the episodic assessment of the change in targeted results that that can be attributed to a programme intervention. M&E allows stakeholders to track whether programmes are achieving their targets and objectives and attempts to link outputs or outcomes directly to an intervention.
M&E is critical to managing health programmes more effectively and improves stake holders accountability, resources allocation and programme implementation and service delivery. Every organization working and sustain M&E plans and systems to ensure achievement of their objectives.
In an era of constrained resources, using data for strategic decision-making around resource allocation and programme improvement has become a major focus. This is particularly true in East Africa, which carries a disproportionately greater disease burden of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. The global push for the use and dissemination of data highlights the need for a medium through which M&E content and applied M&E experience can be shared. The EAJAHME aims to address this need and to serve as the main international forum for publishing papers on applied health M&E in the East Africa region. The journal publishes papers that report on best practices in health M&E, presents studies conducted using health M&E data and disseminates data from the health sector in East Africa. This information is critical for those living and working in the region as well as for the larger scientific community outside of East Africa.
The EAJAHME will be published on a rolling basis. High-quality, original research submissions that adhere to the journal’s aims guidelines will undergo a rigourous peer-review process prior to publication. Articles that have been approved for publication will immediately be published on the journal’s website, http://eajahme.mzumbe.ac.tz, and will be freely available for download to the public. In addition, the journal may occasionally publish conference reports, letters to the editors, conference announcements, and special issues on various topics on health M&E in East Africa. We believe this journal will provide health researchers in East Africa with a scientific forum to publish original work that may otherwise have gone unnoticed, as the barriers to publishing in major international English language journals can be extremely high. Thanks are due to many people and organizations that have helped launch this important new journal. We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Mzumbe University, our collaborators, for their support throughout this process. We also wish to thank the authors who submitted papers to the first issue of the EAJAHME. We are grateful that they responded to our invitation. It is also our great pleasure to welcome the members of the reviewer’s panel of the EAJAHME who review and accept papers to the journal. The journal could not maintain such a rigourous standard of peer review without their support and dedication. It is our sincere hope that the EAJAHME will serve as the main vehicle for presenting ideas and research in the area of applied health M&E for the East Africa region. We are confident that the community of health researchers in East Africa will benefit from sharing best practices, experiences of using data for decision-making, and evaluation results to further scientific inquiry and ensure that lessons learned throughout East Africa do not go undocumented. Any suggestions on how to deliver a better journal to our authors, readers and subscribers would be very much appreciated.
CHIEF EDITOR:
Godfrey Kacholi, MA, MSc, PhD (Mzumbe University, Tanzania)
SECRETARY:
Paul Amani, MA, PhD, (Mzumbe University, Tanzania)
TECHNICAL PERSONNEL:
Joseph Kiphizi - ICTO Mzumbe University
EDITORIAL BOARD:
1. Debbie Bain Brickley, MPH, DrPH (University of California, San Francisco, USA)
2. Christen Said, MPH (University of California, San Francisco, USA)
3. Andrew Abaasa, MSc (MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit on AIDS, Uganda)
4. Mackfallen Anasel, PhD, MSc (Mzumbe University, Tanzania)
5. Gershim Asiki, MBChB, MSc, PhD (African Population & Health Research Center, Kenya)
6. Etienne Karita, MD, MSc, MSPH (Project San Francisco, Rwanda)
7. Claud Kumalija, MSc (Ministry of Health, Tanzania)
8. Lawrencia Mushi, BHSM, MSc, PhD (Mzumbe University, Tanzania)
9. Roger Myrick, PhD, MA (University of California, San Francisco, USA)
10. Gloria Omosa-Manyonyi, MBChB, MSc (University of Nairobi)
11. George Rutherford, MD, MA (University of California, San Francisco, USA)
12. Jim Todd, MA, MSc (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK)
13. Sandra Dratler, DrPH (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
14. Susie Welty, MPH (University of California, San Francisco, USA)
15. Albino Kalolo, MSc, PhD, (St. Francis University College of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania)
16. Ozayr Mahomed, MD, MPH, PhD, (University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa)
17. Ntuli Kapologwe, MD, MSc, PhD, (President’s Office-Regional Administration and Local Government, Tanzania)
18. Yihun Muligeta, MSc, PhD (Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia)
19. Ruth D. Carlitz, MSc, PhD (University of Amsterdam)
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Rogate Phinias, BHSM, MA (Mzumbe University, Tanzania)
DESIGN & LAYOUT
Mackfallen Anasel (Mzumbe University)
Cover photo by Godfrey Kacholi
Address all editorial correspondence to
Email: submissions@mu.ac.tz
Website: http://eajahme.mzumbe.ac.tz