The United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning's Office of Learning, Evaluation, and Research (PPL/LER) commissioned this study to help USAID determine the extent to which its evaluations are being used and what guidance, tools, or Agency practices might be improved to enhance evaluation utilization. The data was compiled as part of the Evaluation Utilization Study completed in February 2016. The study was informed by three primary data sources: document review, survey research and interviews. Evaluation use was evident at several stages in the USAID Program Cycle. At the country level, 59 percent of approved strategies were found to have referenced USAID evaluations and 71 percent of evaluations were used to support and/or modify a USAID project or activity. The most common changes found were actions that refocus ongoing activities, including revisions to delivery mechanism work plans, extending activity timelines or expanding activity geographic areas. The study team concluded that USAID evaluation utilization practices are already strong and compare well to those of other US Government agencies examined in previous studies by the US Government Accountability Office.

This is a Midterm Performance Evaluation of the Health Policy Plus (HP+) Project. The purpose of the evaluation is to provide an independent assessment of HP+ progress toward achieving project goals and objectives. Evaluation questions focus on: a) the extent to which HP+ technical approaches have enabled achievement of project objectives and met indicators; b) the current level of satisfaction of USAID and other partners with project progress to date; and c) emerging trends and needs in health policy that might be addressed in this or future projects. Methods included review of background documents, review of a midterm self-assessment and other information provided by Palladium based on questions posed by the team, detailed interviews with knowledgeable informants, and an online e-survey. Findings and conclusions were that HP+ progress in achieving program results in its four main technical areas (policy, advocacy, health financing, and accountability/governance) is on track; demand for HP+ in health financing has increased rapidly, indicative both of growing need for this assistance and satisfaction with work completed so far; on the whole, stakeholders say they are very satisfied with results being achieved; there remain some challenges and areas for improvement going forward; and there are a number of important emerging policy needs that could be addressed in this or future projects.

The Updated Systematic Review reviews the January 2010 to August 2013 health IT literature to examine the effects of health IT across three aspects of care: efficiency, quality, and safety. This report updates previous systematic reviews of the health IT literature, focusing specifically on identifying and summarizing the evidence related to the use of health IT as outlined in the Meaningful Use regulations. The review examined the literature to determine the article authors' findings related to the effects or associations of a meaningful use functionality on an aspect of care. Each article's findings was scored as positive (defined as: health IT improved key aspect of care but none worse off), mixed-positive (defined as: positive effects of health IT outweight negative effects), neutral (defined as: health IT not associated with change in outcome), or negative (defined as: negative effects of health IT on outcome). The full review data: article, related meaningful use functionality, aspect of care, and author sentiment are provided in this dataset.