Metrics: What Counts in Global Health

Description

This volume's contributors evaluate the accomplishments, limits, and consequences of using quantitative metrics in global health. Whether analyzing maternal mortality rates, the relationships between political goals and metrics data, or the links between health outcomes and a program's fiscal support, the contributors question the ability of metrics to solve global health problems. They capture a moment when global health scholars and practitioners must evaluate the potential effectiveness and pitfalls of different metrics—even as they remain elusive and problematic. Contributors. Vincanne Adams, Susan Erikson, Molly Hales, Pierre Minn, Adeola Oni-Orisan, Carolyn Smith-Morris, Marlee Tichenor, Lily Walkover, Claire L. Wendland Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Introduction......Page 8 Chapter 1. Metrics of the Global Sovereign: Numbers and Stories in Global Health......Page 26 Part I. Getting Good Numbers......Page 62 Chapter 2. Estimating Death: A Close Reading of Maternal Mortality Metrics in Malawi......Page 64 Chapter 3. The Obligation to Count: The Politics of Monitoring Maternal Mortality in Nigeria......Page 89 Part II. Metrics Politics......Page 110 Chapter 4. The Power of Data: Global Malaria Governance and the Senegalese Data Retention Strike......Page 112 Chapter 5. Native Sovereignty by the Numbers: The Metrics of Yup’ik Behavioral Health Programs......Page 132 Part III. Metrics Economics......Page 152 Chapter 6. Metrics and Market Logics of Global Health......Page 154 Chapter 7. When Good Works Count......Page 170 Part IV. Storied Metrics......Page 186 Chapter 8. When Numbers and Stories Collide: Randomized Controlled Trials and the Search for Ethnographic Fidelity in the Veterans Administration......Page 188 Chapter 9. The Tyranny of the Widget: An American Medical Aid Organization’s Struggles with Quantification......Page 210 Epilogue: What Counts in Good Global Health?......Page 232 References......Page 238 Contributors......Page 260 Index......Page 262