Strengthening Health Information Systems in Botswana

Author(s): MEASURE Evaluation

Year: 2018

Abstract:

MEASURE Evaluation, funded by the United States Agency for International Development, has been working with Botswana’s Gender Affairs Department—housed within the Ministry of Nationality, Immigration, and Gender Affairs—to put in place a mobile-based referral system to better connect survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) to available services. Before this pilot, a system for capturing or transferring GBV data did not exist. In the absence of such a system, collecting GBV data for planning purposes was difficult, and when GBV survivors sought help, they were forced to provide their information multiples times at different legal, health, and other service points. MEASURE Evaluation’s collaborative effort to create and implement the GBV referral system strengthens elements of the health information system (HIS) identified in our Health Information System Strengthening Model.

This brief features a graphic that depicts MEASURE Evaluation activities in the model’s “enabling environment” and “information generation” domains to support the referral system. By displaying interventions across the model, we see their strategic interaction, and how this combination of interventions strengthens data quality and use at all levels of the health system. A table lists additional MEASURE Evaluation activities that support HIS strengthening in Botswana, by the year in which they began. Because of these interventions, we expect to the quality of the data collected to improve and the use of GBV data to generate health indicators, statistics, and trends for data-informed decision making to increase.