Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for Capacity Strengthening in Health Research
ESSENCE Good practice document series
Summary
ESSENCE on Health Research is an initiative between funding agencies to scale up coordination and harmonization of the research capacity investments. It aims to improve the impact of investments in institutions and people, and provides enabling mechanisms that address needs and priorities within national strategies on research for health. ESSENCE members embrace the principles of donor harmonization and country alignment, as expressed in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 and enhanced by the Accra Agenda for Action in 2008, both produced in collaboration with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). According to these principles, donors/funders should align with priorities of countries in which they work, and harmonize their actions and procedures in order to facilitate complementarity among funders and to reduce administrative overload for recipients of funding.
To achieve these goals, ESSENCE members agreed to jointly develop and produce good practice documents that would incorporate current best knowledge and practice on health research and development issues. This Framework is the first in what is hoped to be a series of good practice documents that will be produced by the initiative. At its meeting on November 15, 2010 in Montreux, Switzerland, ESSENCE members unanimously agreed to endorse this Framework as their first good practice document. It is hoped that with this Framework, the members of ESSENCE and other partners will have access to a common tool as they plan, monitor and evaluate health research capacity strengthening initiatives in collaboration with their partners.