Research Partnerships

Evaluation of the Institute of International Education's Reproductive Health Leadership Program

Recent news reports have highlighted the first significant decline in decades in the number of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth each year - a remarkable sign of progress in family planning and reproductive health services. Yet much remains to be done, and the health and well-being of women and families continues to be a global leadership challenge.

From 2000 to 2011, the Institute of International Education West Coast Center's Leadership Development for Mobilizing Reproductive Health Program (LDM) has helped develop and sustain leaders working on the front lines of family planning, HIV/AIDS, adolescent reproductive health, gender-based violence, and improved maternal health care.

With support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the LDM program has supported over 1,200 emerging and established leaders in developing the vision, commitment, knowledge and skills to make systemic improvements to reproductive health options and the overall quality of life, especially for vulnerable people. Most recently, LDM has focused on institutionalizing strong in-country leadership programs, building and sustaining networks that are platforms for learning and action, and offering leadership development programs, especially for women and youth.

LDM leaders work in the poorest regions of countries in greatest need: Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines. According to the new study on reproductive health in the medical journal The Lancet, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Ethiopia are among the six countries that accounted for more than half of all the maternal deaths in 2008.

In order to evaluate and document the impact of the program, RCLA has collaborated with the IIE West Coast Center and the Packard Foundation to conduct an participatory program evaluation. Amparo Hofmann-Pinilla, deputy director of the Research Center for Leadership in Action, and RCLA consultant Judith Kallick Russell have been the principal evaluators.

The Participatory Action Research approach involves the use of mixed methods, including a comprehensive review of existing documentation, interviews with key informants, and the creation of multiple spaces for data collection and collective sense making through small Action-Reflection groups. The participatory process has drawn on the insights of LDM fellows, staff from IIE and other key stakeholders to examine key components of the programs, assess gains over time and lessons learned, and determine together how to develop future initiatives.

The results from the evaluation have been documented in individual country-level reports produced by the five national evaluators and a program-level report from RCLA that analyzes the evaluation results across the five countries. These reports will be publicly available at the end of Summer 2011.