All TB REACH funded projects are monitored and evaluated by independent Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) reviewers on behalf of TB REACH/Stop TB Partnership. For the funding period 2016-2020/21, TB REACH has awarded a grant to KIT Royal Tropical Institute to conduct external M&E of all TB REACH projects. TB REACH’s monitoring and evaluation framework aims to measure a project’s population-level impact and the attribution of impact to the project as much as possible. The M&E framework is available here.
The success of TB REACH funded projects is first and foremost defined by the additional number of TB patients notified and successfully treated, over and above what would have been accomplished without TB REACH grants. Monitoring and evaluation of the progress and results of TB REACH funded projects is primarily based on routinely collected surveillance data by the countries’ NTPs.
All TB REACH funded interventions strive to either (i) identify and diagnose prevalent TB and cut the transmission cycle of the disease, (ii) improve treatment adherence and outcomes, or (iii) develop products to aid TB health service delivery. Aside from these main objectives which TB REACH projects have in common, the M&E framework is tailored to different barriers identified and addressed each project encounters in their pathway of care as well as intervention types, populations and underserved areas targeted, and testing procedures used.
All of TB REACH’s projects focusing on improving TB case detection are required to set up their interventions, evaluation- and control areas and target populations and in line with TB REACH’s M&E framework. TB REACH funded projects that seek to either (i) improve treatment adherence and treatment outcomes or (ii) develop products to aid TB health service delivery apply a more individually tailored M&E framework to their projects. In doing so, the projects’ specificities can be taken into account as their impact target is not to increase TB case detection.
External M&E services are provided to proposals that passed the first proposal stage and are preparing to develop a full proposal in the second stage and for assessment and selection by the independent PRC. From proposal stage 2 and until a grantee’s implementation of the interventions, the M&E support ensures that projects establish ambitious but realistic process indicators, expected targets and outcomes for the carefully delineated target population in the evaluation area.
Once PRC-recommended projects are signed and become TB REACH funded projects, M&E reviewers are assigned to specific projects which they follow through their respective lifecycle, and visit at least once during project operations. M&E activities mainly include the preparation of a baseline validation review to ensure that project targets and objectives are ambitious yet feasible within existing resources and time line. Once projects start operations, M&E reviewers analyze data for every calendar quarter and a Quarterly Review Note is submitted by TB REACH grantees. Once project operations end, M&E reviewers produce a Project Annual Review with their final conclusions about the effectiveness and benefits of the respective project. In addition, M&E support is provided to grantees in the preparation of their Grantee Annual Narrative Report, ensuring that the data used and presented by the grantees match with the M&E reviewers’ data interpretation.