MEASURE Evaluation Awarded More than $35 Million to Improve Data and Impact in Fight against Tuberculosis through the TB DIAH Project

Photo by Jenny Nordstrom, Side Door Studios.

Yesterday, as world leaders gathered at the United Nations High-Level Meeting on the Fight to End Tuberculosis, the USAID Administrator, Mark Green, emphasized fighting TB as a top priority for the United States Government, and announced the launch of the Global Accelerator to End Tuberculosis as USAID’s new TB business model. The Accelerator will catalyze investments across multiple countries and sectors to end the epidemic while building self-reliance. Administrator Green also announced that USAID had initiated the first award of the Accelerator —more than $35 million to UNC for the TB Data, Impact Assessment and Communications Hub (TB DIAH) project.

The project will build upon MEASURE Evaluation’s main USAID award of $232 million over five years (UNC’s largest-ever award). TB DIAH will be implemented from September 2018 to September 2023 with the aim to strengthen TB information systems and to build the capacity of low-resource countries for TB monitoring and evaluation (M&E) on their journey to self-reliance.

MEASURE Evaluation’s strategy for TB DIAH is to provide more accurate and timely data to combat the disease, to share those data widely across all organizations fighting TB, and to establish an information resource repository as a lasting global good. TB DIAH aims to ensure optimal demand for and analysis of TB data and the appropriate use of such information to measure performance and to inform national TB programs and USAID interventions and policies. Through the TB DIAH Associate Award, the capacity of TB decision makers to collect, analyze, and use reliable information to scale up high-quality and sustainable TB services will be strengthened. TB DIAH will be instrumental in establishing and implementing the performance-based measurement system under the new USAID TB business model.

The project director for TB DIAH is Stephanie Mullen, DrPH, MPH, a senior M&E advisor with MEASURE Evaluation at John Snow, Inc. (JSI), one of MEASURE Evaluation’s partner organizations. “We are excited to implement this project in light of the High-Level Meeting at the United Nations’ 73rd General Assembly about the Fight to End TB,” she said. “Increasing the capacity of national TB programs, ministries of health, civil societies, the private sector, and donor communities to collect, analyze, and use TB data to improve detection, quality of care, and best placement of resources is paramount in realizing a world free of TB.”

Jim Thomas, associate professor of epidemiology at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and MEASURE Evaluation’s director, will be the principal investigator for the new TB DIAH award. UNC and JSI will administer the TB DIAH program, with support from two of MEASURE Evaluation’s partners: ICF and Palladium.

USAID administers the U.S. foreign assistance program providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 80 countries worldwide.