Measuring Regional Policy Change and Pro-Poor Health Policy Success: A PRARI Toolkit of Indicators for the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

This PRARI toolkit is the culmination of the work conducted in the chapter on indicator development of the Poverty Reduction and Regional Integration (PRARI) project led by Professor Nicola Yeates at The Open University (UK)2. The two-year project studies what regional institutional practices and methods of regional policy formation are conducive to the emergence of embedded pro-poor health strategies, and what national, regional and international actors can do to promote these policies. This work was carried out with support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)/ Department for International Development (DfID) United Kingdom, Grant Reference ES/L005336/1. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the ESRC/DfID. The toolkit is one of the main areas of work within PRARI. We hope that it will be actively used by the various stakeholders of SADC especially officials of SADC Secretariat (who also contributed to its development) in the monitoring of regional health policy in SADC. A particular focus is placed on three diseases that have a conspicuous incidence on the poor and most vulnerable groups. The product is an indicator system. It is not meant to be static. It is not meant to be final. Its novelty is the participatory method and approach used in developing the indicators by the potential end users.