​The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) received £2 million from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) to pilot a demand-driven approach to evaluating the impact of health interventions in Uganda and Zambia.

To do this, CHAI developed the Demand-Driven Evaluation for Decisions (3DE) model. The 3DE approach was based on the recognition that Ministry of Health officials in Uganda and Zambia often lacked evidence on the most effective and efficient ways to deliver known clinical interventions and services. Furthermore, where evidence was being generated, it was often not relevant to the operational needs of the officials, or not produced within the necessary decision-making timeframes.

This evaluation – led by Oxford Policy Management – aims to:

• refine and test the 3DE theory of change; 

• assess the quality of evaluations produced under the pilot; 

• assess whether the 3DE model had been successful in supporting and increasing evidence based policy-making, building capacity and changing the behaviour of ministry staff in demanding and using evidence. 

The Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) programme is helping to design the impact evaluation methodology. In particular, contributing to the design of the political economy analysis, which helps to understand the context within which the 3DE interventions took place, as well as how the context influences and explains the processes and results documented by the evaluation. 

This project contributed to RAPID’s third outcome: Making development organisation smarter.