Project CHOICE: Six Years Later
Six years after the completion of the Child Health Opportunities Integrated with Community Empowerment (CHOICE) program, Project Concern International's USAID-funded project in Indonesia, the Pulte Institute provided a post-project evaluation to determine whether program benefits were still present in communities formerly supported by the project. The CHOICE program provided improved access to primary health care services, trained caretakers, and educated local community members on basic health care.
With the use of mobile phones to collect data, including survey questionnaires programed into smart phones and tablets, Pulte Institute Monitoring and Evaluation experts determined whether program benefits are still present within the Indonesian communities. In doing so, people who received assistance from the program were studied alongside a new, untreated, group of people allowing for an easy comparison of the two groups. Among other improvements, NDIGD found a particularly positive increase in health care for infants, aged zero to two years old, largely attributed to the number of skilled healthworkers attending births.