Keynote, Sevilla Room, InterContinental Miami

How do you do evaluation when effective public communication can be the difference between life and death? Quickly and well is the short answer. This presentation takes the audience inside the evaluation team and strategy of the World Health Organization from declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic in early 2020 to 2023. It unpacks the challenges; outlines the multiple data sets available globally from basic to advanced; and describes the expanded’ MEL’ approach (measurement, evaluation and learning) that was implemented globally in 150 country offices across six regions and explains why it was successful.

Key takeaways include:

• Expanding measurement and Evaluation (M&E) to MEL (measurement, evaluation and learning) – and the benefits of learning (or why M&E is only going half-way);
• Learning FROM M&E – examples of delivering MEL to shape future strategy;
• Learning ABOUT M&E – a pre-requisite to learn from MEL;
• Overcoming ‘substitution error’, the most common mistake in M&E – a revised model and two quick tests as examples of two key resources for learning about M&E;
• Summary of findings and learnings from 3 years leading evaluation of WHO communication during COVID-19.