TY - JOUR
T1 - “Real-Time” Monitoring of Under-Five Mortality
T2 - A Vision Tempered by Reality
AU - RMM Working Group
AU - Bryce, Jennifer
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: The RMM project was funded by Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada (http://www.
Funding Information:
eng) through the Real-Time Results Tracking grant (#7056791) under the Catalytic Initiative to Save a Million Lives. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Funding Information:
The RMM project was funded by Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada (http://www. international.gc.ca/international/index.aspx?lang= eng) through the Real-Time Results Tracking grant (#7056791) under the Catalytic Initiative to Save a Million Lives. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The members of the Real-Time Monitoring of Under-Five Mortality (RMM) Working Group are: Country collaborators Oumarou Habi, Aklilu Kidanu, Mercy Kanyuka, Hamadoun Sangho, and their research staffs in Niger, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mali, respectively; current and former IIP faculty and students Agbessi Amouzou, Robert Black, Eoghan Brady, Elizabeth Hazel, Olga Joos, Alain Koffi, Andrew Marsh, Melinda Munos, Lois Park, and Emily Wilson; and RMM Technical Advisors Gareth Jones, Kenneth Hill, Larry Moulton, and Cesar Victora. All contributed to the design and implementation of the RMM project. We extend a special thanks to Canadian colleagues Ernest Loevinsohn and Phedra Moon-Morris, who conceptualized the idea of RMM and worked hard to generate interest and support for the work. We have also benefitted over the years from important technical inputs and supportive guidance from Judith Lajtonyi, Jennifer Heys, Elisabeth King, and Geoff Black. The RMM project benefitted from technical inputs from Kate Gilroy, Marjorie Opuni, and David Peters. We also thank Ministry of Health personnel at all levels, development partners, and the many individuals who helped make this work possible in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Niger.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2016 Jennifer Bryce. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2016/1
Y1 - 2016/1
N2 - • Civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems have emerged as a major priority in the post-2015 development agenda, largely based on their assumed potential to generate population data for use in guiding investments and managing programs in low-income countries. • The evidence base on how best to design, implement, and sustain such systems is weak, especially for mortality statistics. There are global calls for new research and analysis to inform the CRVS agenda, whether the results are positive or negative. • The Real-Time Monitoring of Under-Five Mortality (RMM) project aimed to develop and test methods for producing estimates of child mortality for recent periods of one year or less. Three broad approaches were assessed: community-based reporting of vital events; calibration of facility data to represent deaths in the population; and rapid survey methods. • Between 2008 and 2013, we applied and rigorously evaluated at least two of these approaches in each of five countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Niger. • The RMM project, reported here as the PLOS Collection on RMM, has generated an important body of evidence that can inform efforts to strengthen CRVS in low-income countries and provides a foundation for continuing CRVS implementation research.
AB - • Civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems have emerged as a major priority in the post-2015 development agenda, largely based on their assumed potential to generate population data for use in guiding investments and managing programs in low-income countries. • The evidence base on how best to design, implement, and sustain such systems is weak, especially for mortality statistics. There are global calls for new research and analysis to inform the CRVS agenda, whether the results are positive or negative. • The Real-Time Monitoring of Under-Five Mortality (RMM) project aimed to develop and test methods for producing estimates of child mortality for recent periods of one year or less. Three broad approaches were assessed: community-based reporting of vital events; calibration of facility data to represent deaths in the population; and rapid survey methods. • Between 2008 and 2013, we applied and rigorously evaluated at least two of these approaches in each of five countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Niger. • The RMM project, reported here as the PLOS Collection on RMM, has generated an important body of evidence that can inform efforts to strengthen CRVS in low-income countries and provides a foundation for continuing CRVS implementation research.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001912
DO - 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001912
M3 - Review article
C2 - 26808398
AN - SCOPUS:85007308004
VL - 13
JO - PLoS Medicine
JF - PLoS Medicine
SN - 1549-1277
IS - 1
M1 - e1001912
ER -