From data and reporting to impact and accountability: A case study on the Country Health Situation Rooms

Overview

This case study describes the Country Health Situation Room initiative, an approach developed in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa to date in partnership with UNAIDS, to support better use of health data to help keep populations healthier and save more lives. The approach seeks to bring together different health data sources at country level into an integrated system that can then be used to put powerful, intuitive visualisations of progress and gaps on key health indicators into the hands of national decision-makers. The case study was based on document reviews and interviews with key Situation Room stakeholders.

While the “back-end” – the data integration layers and warehousing – of the Country Situation Rooms follow similar design principles, the user interface or “front-end” is highly customisable. How countries decide to customise their Situation Room depends on a number of factors: in particular the health areas of interest, the intended users, and the use format.