From 2023-2024, Camber supported the WA Fatherhood Council in its development of the WA Fatherhood Study. The Council is a collaborative of WA state agency providers, community partners, funders, advocacy, academics, and most importantly fathers with lived experiences. Camber and the Council conduct a nine-month “WA Fatherhood: State of the State” study that includes a landscape of current policies, funding, programs and experiences of fathers and fatherhood figures in Washington state, with a focus on identifying gaps and needs to inform strategic planning and policy recommendations.
In 2023, Camber engaged with the Task Force for Global Health (TFGH) Health Campaign Effectiveness (HCE) Coalition. Camber played a key role in supporting the co-development of their Collaborative Action Strategy Strategy which is a strategy that seeksto guide partners toward a future state where health programs collaborate effectively with each other and with corresponding health services to maximize the impact of campaigns on health outcomes, and ultimately aims to catalyze stronger, more resilient country-led health systems in the long-term. This strategy adopts systems lenses and aims, among other things, to work on inequities by streamlining campaigns and maximizing resource use benefiting populations.
The study was co-developed in 2023 by 48 global, regional, and country-level experts representing major campaign funders, implementors, and country leadership (grouped into Task Teams). Camber played a pivotal role in advocating for the inclusion of representatives from countries in the Global South within these task teams and in reaching out and including them. This effort aimed to ensure equitable representation and amplify diverse voices in shaping the strategy.The work of these task teams was iterative and collaborative, with specific focus around developing trust and giving legitimate voice to all stakeholders.
The TFGH and Task Teams developed and adopted an expanded definition of campaign effectiveness. Traditionally, campaign effectiveness is measured through coverage with indicators that primarily measure targets, prevention, detection, treatment, and results/outcomes. Given the desire for an expanded definition beyond coverage, it can also be understood as a combination of additional parameters, including: efficiency, equity, availability, access, service quality (including timeliness), clinical outcomes, resilience and responsiveness, community awareness and community acceptance and engagement.
As part of this work, Camber contributed to defining indicators assessing an expanded campaign effectiveness definition. We proposed a comprehensive list of suggested indicators designed to guide countries in developing Monitoring, Evaluating, Learning, and Adaptation strategies across campaigns. Drawing from implementation research, international best practices, and feedback from stakeholders at global, regional, and country levels, this list aims to enhance the measurement framework’s consistency and clarity. By offering adaptable guidance, countries can tailor these indicators to their specific contexts, ensuring a more accurate and relevant evaluation of health campaign outcomes.
To circumvent this potential issue, we suggested an equity indicator—”Disaggregation of access and coverage data through socioeconomic, gender, geographic, and ethnic factors”— to measure the degree of fairness in the ultimate distribution of the campaign intervention. Similarly, for access, Camber proposed indicators such as the “mean distance to services for the target population” or “cost of getting the treatment for the target population” to measure the ability (physical, financial, cultural) of the target population to utilize the health services provided. These indicators not only enrich the evaluation process but also prioritize equity considerations within campaign assessments.
As the project transitions into the “planning and execution phase” of the CAS, we have been tasked with assessing the current HCE Coalition Governance Operating Model through interviews and surveys, followed by recommended updates, to reflect the evolving stakeholders’ priorities. We specifically considered how to integrate community and equity considerations into the governance diagnosis and framework, trying to ensure that decision-making power is distributed appropriately among stakeholders. During diagnosis and implementation, power shifting towards countries and beneficiaries as well as continuous learning and adaptability were clear priorities with specific mechanisms recommended. This is a work in progress, and Camber’s goal is to help refine a governance structure that not only supports effective decision-making but also fosters inclusivity, ownership and sustainability.
Camber is excited to continue to work with the HCE Coalition and help support focus country leadership in reviewing, customizing, and implementing the CAS to their specific contexts and needs. In that context, 2024 plans include building a Country Ownership and Partner Transition Plan to help transition work to country ownership of the CAS, fostering sustainability and resilience of the project.