Ugochi Daniels¹, Krishna Bose², and Audrey Elster¹. (1) African Youth Alliance, United Nations Population Fund, 220E 42nd St, New York, NY 10017, 212 297 5164, daniels@unfpa.org, (2) Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development, World Health Organization, 20 Avenue Appia, CH-1211, Geneva 27, Switzerland

To improve adolescent sexual behavioral outcomes, the African Youth Alliance (AYA), - integrates six program components, implemented by sixty organizations across four countries of sub-Saharan Africa. In this context, complex evaluation frameworks (in response to programmatic and management complexities) are unwieldy and impractical. Best practices to monitor and evaluate such programs are therefore urgently needed.

Challenges include: 1. Measuring program impact given contextual and programmatic variability across sites. 2. Measuring outcomes amongst hard-to-reach adolescent groups. 3. Effective use of baseline information for program design and implementation. 4. Measuring synergy achieved through integrated programming. 5. Managing tools, systems and processes of data collection and monitoring. 6.Reliance on over 60 executing partners (of varying capacity) to monitor and evaluate program activities.

AYA is implementing a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation plan by: 1. Strengthening systems and capacity to collect monitoring data 2. Identifying “effective and efficient implementation ” sites for impact evaluation 3. Reviewing baseline data to select indicators for behavioral outcomes and their determinants based on: a)Those behaviors that contribute most to health outcomes b)Identifying the determinants that are the strongest predictors of those behaviors c)Reviewing at mid-term assessment which of these determinants can be changed through current intervention strategies 4.Using qualitative methods to assess hard-to-reach groups.

The endline assessment will include quantitative impact measurement of behavior change in selected sites, measurement of intermediate outcomes (that will ultimately lead to behavior change) in all sites and qualitative assessment of hard-to-reach groups.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the key issues in monitoring and evaluating an integrated, multi-sectoral adolescent sexual and reproductive health program
• Describe best practices (relevant strategies, tools and methodologies) for tracking results

Keywords: Adolescents, International, Evaluation

Related Web page: www.ayaonline.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.